Abstract
The rearing of small ruminants plays a major role in the farming system of the people of the Tolon-Kumbungu District of the Northern Region of Ghana. Small ruminant production is a major source of livelihood to over 70% of the inhabitants of the District. However, poor husbandry practices have often served as a major constraint to achieving production and productivity increases. This implies that small ruminant farmers need to adopt innovations in order to promote and sustain small ruminant production. This paper assesses the extent to which innovations introduced to the farmers in the study area are adopted, especially the role of farmer socio-economic characteristics in influencing the innovations adoption levels of small ruminants. A total of 120 small ruminant farmers were selected for the study using simple random sampling, and questionnaires and personal observations employed for the data collection. Twelve communities were randomly selected from four Ministry of Food and Agriculture operational zones. Data were analyzed using SPSS computer software package and descriptive statistics computed based on the data. Cross tabulation and other test statistics were used to determine the relationship between adoption levels and the variables studied. The findings show that, socio-economic characteristics such as extension contacts and credit access showed significance with respect to adoption of most of the innovations. Therefore, if adoption level is to be enhanced, attention should be focused more on training of more agriculture extension agents (AEAs) to increase their number in the area, as well as making affordable credit available and accessible to the farmers to expand their farms.KEY DESCRIPTORS: Adoption, animals, credit, extension and small ruminants
Highlights
Ghana’s economy is largely agro-based with the livestock sub-sector contributing about 25-30 percent to agriculture Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (ISSER, 2004)
This study sought answers to the following questions: What technologies exist for small ruminant production in the Tolon-Kumbungu District? To what extent do farmer socio-economic factors affect their adoption of these technologies? The overall objective of the paper is to determine the extent to which innovations have been adopted by small ruminant farmers in the Tolon-Kumbungu District of the Northern Region of Ghana
The Tolon/Kumbungu District (TKD) is one of the districts created through Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) Law 207 in 1988 with Tolon as its Capital
Summary
Ghana’s economy is largely agro-based with the livestock sub-sector contributing about 25-30 percent to agriculture Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (ISSER, 2004). Livestock keeping makes significant contribution to rural livelihoods. It provides employment and serves as a source of wealth creation for reducing poverty. Koney (1992) explains that people keep animals as a source of wealth and for meeting their social and cultural obligations such as dowries, festivals and funerals. Animals may be kept for occupational, sporting, religious and bride price payment reasons (Turner, 2007). In most cases livestock is the source of cash income for subsistent farmers as well as endurance of family purchasing power in the event of unprofitable agriculture due to natural calamities (Rahman, 2007)
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