Abstract
This study examined the adoption of improved technologies in maize-based farming systems on income of farmers in Ondo state, Nigeria. It specifically identifies the socio-economic characteristics, determines the intensity of adoption of improved technologies introduced to maize-based farmers and examine the effect of adoption of improved technologies on their income in the study area. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to obtain data from 160 maize-based farmers that were selected from 3 Local Government Areas in Ondo State. Descriptive Statistical Analysis, Budgetary Technique Analysis and Tobit Regression Analysis were used to analyze the data. Results on socio-economic characteristics disclosed that most (59.82 percent) of the respondents were relatively old (more than 50 years) with the mean age of 54.76 years. Also, 50.63 percent of the respondents had between 5 and 8 members in their households. It was revealed that only 29.62 percent of the respondents had secondary education and above. The farmers were well experienced with 65 percent of them having more than 20 years of farming experience and 73.75 percent of them had less than 2 hectares of land as farm size. The result of profitability analysis shows that the total revenue, gross margin and net farm income for the improved technology adopters are ₦750,450, ₦573,130 and ₦521,940 respectively. On the other hand, the total revenue, gross margin and net farm income for the non-adopters of improved technology are ₦320,140, ₦244,180and ₦227,830 respectively, implying that improved technology adopters performed way better than non-adopters in terms of total revenue, gross margin and total cost. The determinants of intensity of adoption of improved technologies in the study area as shown by Tobit regression estimate revealed that age, extension access, farming experience, marital status, household size, farm size and educational level were statistically significant, implying that they are the important variables found to greatly influence the intensity of adoption of improved technologies by maize-based farmers in Ondo state. It is therefore recommended that policy option requires the traditional technology users to embrace the improved agricultural technologies in order to increase their earning per unit of land cultivated should be introduced.
Highlights
Agriculture which is the main stay of the Nigerian economy, involves small scale farmers scattered over wide expanse of land area, with small holding ranging from 0.5 to 3.0 hectare per farm land
In order to analyze the intensity of adoption, measured by the average proportion of farmland devoted to improved maize production by the respondents, this study adopted the Tobit model which is a hybrid of the discrete and the continuous dependent variable which originated from the work of Tobin (1958)
The results revealed that educational level, farming experience and household size were all statistically significant at 1% while age, marital status and extension service were statistically significant at 5% each, implying that they were variables found to significantly influence the level of adoption of improved technologies in the study area
Summary
Agriculture which is the main stay of the Nigerian economy, involves small scale farmers scattered over wide expanse of land area, with small holding ranging from 0.5 to 3.0 hectare per farm land. Maize (Zea mays L), referred to as corn in some parts of the world is a crop grown wildly in a range of agroecological environments It is the most important cereal crop in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and an important staple food for more than 1.2 billion people in SSA and Latin America. All parts of the crop can be used for food and non-food products It is a major cereal being cultivated in the rainforest and derived savannah zones of Nigeria. It is the third most important cereal crop after wheat and rice, providing food for humans and animals and serving as a basic raw material for the production of starch, alcoholic beverages, food sweeteners and fuel [4]. Maize has consumption quantity of 53.20 g/capital/day [4]
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