Smallholder Farmers’ Adoption Of Soybean Production Technologies In Kondala District, West Wollega Zone, Oromia Regional State Of Ethiopia

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.