ANALYSIS OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING ADOPTION OF IMPROVED RICE TECHNOLOGY IN NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study was carried out in Niger State, Nigeria to analyze factors affecting adoption of improved rice technology. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 180 respondents. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the data analysis. The result disclosed that 55% of the respondents were still in their active and productive age. 95% of the respondents were married and majority 77% had moderate house hold size of 1-10 people. Majority (91.1%) had no formal education and 96.7% were small holder rice farmers. On farm adoption research and town criers ranked the 1st as rice farmer major sources of information. The major improved rice technologies adopted by the farmers were weed control (67.2%) and recommended land preparation practices (59.45%). The major factors affecting the adoption of improved rice technologies were marital status and extension contact at P≤0.01 probability level; other factors include cooperative membership and age of the respondents at P≤0.1 probability level, though age was inversely related to adoption of improved rice technologies. It was recommended that institutional credit organizations should provide credit facilities at a low interest rate to the rice farmers to enable them adopt the improved rice technologies.