The Effect Of Socio-Economic Characteristics Of Cattle Farmers On The Adoption Of Artificial Insemination Technology In Kaduna State Of Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the effect of socio-economic characteristics of cattle farmers on the adoption of Artificial Insemination Technology in Kaduna State, Nigeria. One hundred and twenty respondents were purposively selected for the study, drawing 30 respondents each from the four zonal offices of the Kaduna State Agricultural Development Programme (KADP). The design of the study was a cross sectional survey. Questionnaires were used to collect the data from the respondents. Of the 120 questionnaires administered, 116 were retrieved. The data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The result of the descriptive statistics reveal that 100% of the respondents were males and the average age of the respondents was 57.38 years with an average household size of 13.5. About 89% of the respondents had attended quoranic/adult education and they were majorly pastoralists (88.79%) They had a mean farming experience and herd size of 31.72 and 78.29 respectively. The t-test result revealed that educational attainment, herd size and age had a significant and linear relationship with adoption of AI at p<0.05. It was recommended that more enlightenment be done on AI, its services be subsidized and that the coordinating agency be decentralized. I. Introduction Africa has 16% of the world's dairy livestock but produces less than 4% of global milk production with an average cow producing only 454 litres per year compared to 5630 litres for top producing cows in the European Union (EU). This is in spite of the fact that livestock products account for 25-35% of agricultural production in Africa (USDA, 2006). This low level of milk production in Africa can be attributed to a number of constraints that include low quality dairy breeds, limitation imposed by harsh environmental conditions such as high ambient temperatures, high incidence of diseases and parasites and poor nutrition (Gefu, 1989). An equally important factor is the generally low level application of modern technology in the management of dairy cattle, particularly am, nong the small holder dairy farms. Artificial Insemination (AI) is one such technology that can solve these constraints if the necessary conditions are put in place to spur poor rural farmers to adopt the technology. Artificial insemination (AI) has been used for improvement of livestock production in developed countries. Its use in developing countries has been reported in several literature to be less widespread and the result obtained are far from been satisfactory (Butswat and Choji, 1995). Under tropical small farm conditions, a number of socio-economic, organizational, biological and technical factors make the service more difficult to provide. If the major constraints can be identified and overcome, the technology would become more widely adopted and contribute to an increased production of milk and meat, leading to better food securities and poverty alleviation. Nigeria's livestock resource base consists of about 15.4 million cattle, 44.1 million goats, 28.0 million sheep, over 150 million poultry, 4.1 million pigs,1.7 million domesticated rabbits, and 0.94 million donkeys, with an estimated value of over 260 billion naira (Nworgu,2006). These livestock resource base if properly harnessed have the potential of meeting up whatever challenges the country faces in terms of the supply of milk and meat. There are prevailing socio-economic and techno-operational including policy constraints limiting the efficiency of production of this cattle population and there is serious need to address these constraints through research support for the generation of producer-implementable technology packages. The WDR (2008) has it that the cross breeding of dairy cows with exotic breeds has improved livelihood of small holder farmers in high potential areas in the tropics. Those about 100 million cattle and pigs are bred annually in the developing world using AI. It added that 'thanks largely to AI, about 1.8 million small scale farmers in the high land of East Africa draw a significant part of their livelihood from the higher milk yields they obtain from genetically improved dairy cattle. Rozeboom (2007) posit that among all the fundamental systems of animal breeding exercise such as random mating, in-breeding, line breeding and out breeding, artificial insemination has proved to be the best and efficient method. This submission had been expressed by Butswat and Choji (1995) when they said that AI is a vital tool for the rapid improvement of livestock allowing for maximum use of best sires on numerous dams and that it is one of the animal production