Assessment of adoption of improved ginger production technologies in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examines the adoption of improved ginger production technologies among farmers in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. Multistage sampling was adopted. Kajuru LGA was purposively selected because of the preponderance of ginger production. In the second stage, a random selection of four extension blocks was made and eight extension cells were also randomly selected. Data were collected from 172 respondents through structured questionnaire and analysed using simple descriptive statistics. The result shows that the mean age of respondents was 32.5years and majority (82.5%) were literates. Mean farming experience was 15 years. More than half (56.7%) of the respondents acquired their land through inheritance and majority (81%) got to know about improve ginger production technologies through radio. Improved production technologies such as use of herbicides (x̅=3.4), use of tarpaulins (x̅=3.4), use of jute bags (x̅=3.4) ranked highest among other production technologies adopted by the farmers. Constraints to adoption of improved ginger production technology were; lack of interest among youths (x̅=2.6) and high cost of agrochemicals (x̅=2.5). It was concluded that radio was the major source of awareness of ginger production technologies and use of chemicals for land treatment ranked 1st in terms of adoption and farm size not adequate being major constraint. The use of radio programme should be strengthened for information dissemination. Land tenure regulations should be modified to allow famers access to land. Chemical weed control should also be encouraged among ginger farmers.