Adoption and Dis-Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture: A Case of Farmers’ Innovations and Integrated Fruit Fly Management in Kenya

Charity M Wangithi,Raphael Belmin,Beatrice W Muriithi

doi:10.3390/agriculture11040338

Charity M Wangithi, Raphael Belmin + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11040338

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Abstract

The invasive fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis poses a major threat to the production and trade of mango in sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers devise different innovations to manage the pest in an attempt to minimize yield loss and production costs while maximizing revenues. Using survey data obtained from Embu County, Kenya, we analyzed farmers’ knowledge and perception as regards the invasive fruit fly, their innovations for the management of the pest, and the determinants of their adoption and dis-adoption decisions of recently developed and promoted integrated pest management (IPM) technologies for suppression of the pest. The results show that farmers consider fruit flies as a major threat to mango production (99%) and primarily depend on pesticides (90%) for the management of the pest. Some farmers (35%) however use indigenous methods to manage the pest. Though farmers possess good knowledge of different IPM strategies, uptake is relatively low. The regression estimates show that continued use of IPM is positively associated with the gender and education of the household head, size of a mango orchard, knowledge on mango pests, training, contact with an extension officer, and use of at least one non-pesticide practice for fruit fly management, while IPM dis-adoption was negatively correlated with the size of the mango orchard, practice score and use of indigenous innovations for fruit fly management. We recommend enhancing farmer′s knowledge through increased access to training programs and extension services for enhanced adoption of sustainable management practices for B. dorsalis.

Highlights

Those who were using fruit fly traps during the survey were categorized as fruit fly integrated pest management (IPM) adopters, those who had never used any of the fruit fly IPM components as non-adopters, while farmers who had previously used some components of the strategy but were not using them during the survey or were not planning to purchase for the succeeding season were classified as dis-adopters
We begin by modeling the dichotomous IPM adoption decisions (IPM use or not) using the Probit model to test the hypothesis on characteristics associated with the farm and farmer and the study context on fruit fly IPM adoption
The results reveal the use of synthetic pesticides as the major fruit fly management practice, despite the assiduous IPM promotion effort by International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Mangifera indica are valued across the tropics for both food and nutritional security, as well as employment and income generation. In Kenya, mango is the second most valuable fruit after bananas, accounting for 19.4% of fruit exports in 2017 [1]. In recent years the area under mango has increased, for instance by 3% between

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