Key drivers of adoption intensity of selected improved rice technologies in rural Ghana

Abstract

Over the past three decades, improved rice technologies have been actively promoted and disseminated in Ghana. Prominent amongst the improved technologies are improved seed and Chemical Fertilizer (CF). These technologies have the potential to increase yield, address food insecurity and provide income to farmers. Yet, adoption remains low and rigorous analyses based on farmers’ adoption decisions and intensity of adoption are still limited. This study addresses the knowledge gap by using a cross sectional survey data obtained from a sizable number (917) of individual rice farmers and applied multinomial logit and multivariate Tobit models for the estimation. The two models were used to check for bias and also exclude non-adopters during estimation of intensity of adoption. The results show that the key deciding factors of farmers’ adoption intensity of the selected technologies are gender, age and number of adults in the household. Further interrogation of the finding supposes that labour availability is the main underlying factor for the farmers’ adoption intensity. The positive effect of number of adults in the household also reinforces the importance of labour in the technology adoption process. The study therefore recommends that policies and programmes that seek to intensify rice production in Ghana should make provision for labour, especially for women rice farmers, who are less endowed with productive resources, especially labour.

Keywords

• R3
• Q1
• O3