The determinants for the adoption of compost from household waste for crop production by farmers living nearby Yaoundé, Cameroon: Descriptive and logit model approaches of analysis

Abstract

This paper analyzes the factors influencing the utilization of compost from household waste by farmers living around Yaoundé-city, Cameroon. Both descriptive statistics and logit model are used to analyze the data collected from 108 farmers residing in villages surrounding the city. The descriptive results show that 14 factors mostly affect the compost adoption by farmers. These are gender of farmer, contact with extension agents, education, vegetables cultivation, salarial labour, compost efficacy, household size, managerial position, equipment value, membership in association, membership in credit system, use of mineral fertilizer, animal manure and other fertilizer types. These are mainly factors with positive coefficients and odds ratio higher than one in logit model. However, the percentage of non-compost adopters is higher than compost adopters for the remaining 7 factors (age of farmer, farm size, farm-to-city’s distance, extra-agricultural occupation, animal husbandry practice, land property right, crops  association or rotation practice). These latter 7 factors display negative coefficients and odds ratio lower than one in logit model. Hence, the government should popularize compost by reviewing disfavourable factors and by rewarding/subsidizing farmers using compost.

Keywords: Adoption, compost users, logit model, non compost users, odds ratio.