Adoption of sweet potato production technologies in Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

Improved production technologies of sweet potato were jointly developed by International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Ibadan and National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) Umudike to eliminate constraints associated with farmers’ use of local production technologies. Several years after introduction of the technologies to farmers, sweet potato production in Abia State has remained low and unimpressive despite the relevance of the crop in household food security. This paper therefore seeks to evaluate farmers’ adoption of sweet potato production technologies in the state. A three-staged random sampling technique was employed to select 150 respondents from the three agricultural zones in the state. Data were collected from respondents with use of structured questionnaires and analyzed with descriptive statistics as well as multiple regression analysis. Result of analysis revealed an R2 value of 0.280 indicating that 28% of variation in the adoption of the improved production technologies was accounted for by the variables considered in this study. Adoption of sweet potato production technologies was relatively at a medium level. Also, the result indicated that accruable farm income, farm size cultivated as well as sweet potato output was positively related to farmers’ adoption of the technologies. Thus it was recommended that the mass media should be used to promote and popularize sweet potato and its improved production practices. Soft loans should be provided to farmers for more investment in sweet potato production since expectation of increased income would stimulate adoption of technologies.