Abstract:
Legume crops play great role in improving households’ food security and generating income
for smallholder farmers. However, the yield of the crop is limited due to lack of appropriate
use of production technologies that boost up production. One way of transforming agriculture
isusing improved agricultural production technologies, such as high yielding seed varieties
and application of fertilizer at recommended rate. Soybean is an important legume crop
which has high contents of protein, vitamins and minerals. The productivity of the soybean
crop at national and particularly at study area was very low. To improve such low
productivity, adoption of high yielding varieties with appropriate fertilizer application was
very important. This study was tried to investigate the variation among farmers on the
adoption and intensity of soybean production technology in the Kondala district. Two stages
sampling procedure were followed to select the sample households for the study. Four rural
kebeles were selected from ten soybean producing kebeles by using simple random
sampling.Primary data collected from 185 sample selected households. Both key informant
interview and focus group discussions were used to generate qualitative data. In addition,
secondary data were collected from relevant sources. The data have been analyzed by
descriptive statisticsand the Tobit model using Statistical Package for Social Science
software. Qualitative data narration were used to triangulate survey responses. The result of
the descriptive statistics showed that the majority of farmers 57.3% were adopters and the
remaining 42.7% were non adopters. This study also identifies soybean production
technologies such as recommended seeding rate, recommended fertilizer applications, land
allocation and spacing among adopters and non-adopters and there was statistical
significance difference in technology usage between adopters and non-adopters. Results of
the Tobit model indicated that household ages, education level, farm experience, membership
in cooperatives, access to agricultural inputs, participation in non-farm activities and
frequency of extension contact were positively and significantly influenced the adoption and
intensity use of soybean technologies. Whereas, distance from market center showed,
negative relationship with the adoption and intensity of adoption of soybean production
technology. The study also investigated opportunities and challenges that hamper adoption of
the soybean production technology. The overall finding of the study underlined high
importance of institutional support in the areas of extension; membership in cooperatives and
market to enhance adoption of improved soybean production package. Therefore, policy and
development interventions should give emphasis to improvement of such institutional support
so as to achieve wider adoption which increased the productivity and income of smallholder
farmers.
