Factors Influencing the Adoption of Sasakawa Global 2000Maize Production Technologies among Smallholder Farmers in Kaduna State

Abstract

The study assessed the adoption of Sasakawa Global 2000 maize production practices among smallholder maize farmers in Kaduna State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents from the four ADP zones of the State. In the first stage, four cells were selected randomly from the four ADPs zones. Subsequently, twenty maize farmers were randomly selected from each of the four cells given eighty (80) respondents. Descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The result showed that many (50.0%) of the sampled farmers were between the ages of 31-50years and 58.7% are literate. It, also, revealed that majority (98%) of the respondents had increased yield, eighty three per cent (83%) indicated the use of less fertilizer, while seventy one per cent (71%) reported having improved level of living. The result further shows that age, education, household size, extension contact, farm yield, and access to credit were the factors influencing the adoption of SG 2000 maize production practices at 1% and 5% level of significance. The study recommends that extension workers should assist farmers to form co-operatives associations and where they are in existence, efforts should be made to strengthen them for easy access to credit, farm inputs and markets for their agricultural products.

Key words: Adoption, Extension, and Sasakawa Global 2000