Perception of Farmers on Factors Affecting Adoption of Irrigated Rice Production Technologies in Bontanga, Northern Region, Ghana

Abstract

Rice production is important to the economy and improvement of livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Despite the efforts of government and development partners, yields of rice remain low. However, there were no studies to determine levels of adoption of irrigated rice technologies by farmers at the bontanga irrigation area. The study used a survey design to randomly select 197 farmers who were interviewed using questionnaire. Relationships between independent variables were established, whilst ordinal logistic regression was used to determine best predictors of adoption levels. Credit, mechanisation, and input supply constrained adoption of rice production technologies. Farmers who perceived technologies to be relevant, positively adopted them. Radio, group meetings, friends, family members, and farmers, were the important sources of information on rice technologies. There were very high technologies adoption levels with fertilizer technologies registering the least adoption levels. TPB, RCT, and DIT were relevant in explaining farmers adoption decisions. Age, household size, experience, having assets, farmers group support, status in group, and conducive weather were the best predictors of technologies adoption levels. The study recommends the facilitation of access to inputs, use of ordinal logistic model in studies of multiple technologies, and use of multiple theories in explaining technology packages adoption. KEY WORDS: innovation adoption, multiple technologies, adoption theories, adoption levels, ordinal logistic regression, correlation.