Socio-Economic and Farm-Level Characteristics Influencing Adoption of Rice Production Technologies in Lavun Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study analyzed the socio-economic and farm level characteristics influencing adoption of rice production technologies in Lavun Local Government Area of Niger state. A total of 76 respondents were randomly selected from 24 villages and data were collected using structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, adoption index and discriminate analysis were used in the data analysis. The results reveal that the mean age of the respondents was 38.70 years while the average farm size of the respondents was found to be 2.4 hectares. Also 40.78 percent of the respondents acquired one form of formal education or the other ranging from primary to tertiary education. Furthermore, more than half of the respondents (53.95 percent) were not members of any cooperative societies. Majority of the respondents (52.26 percent) were found to be medium adopters of new technologies. It is therefore suggested that an avenue should be provided for favorable price to farmers to increase their farm income to enable them adopt improved technologies, while special agricultural programmes should be organized on rotational basis to take care of less mobile farmers. __________________________________________________________________________________________