Adoption of Mucuna (Mucuna Utilis) as Soil Management Crop in Republic of Benin
Date
1998-06
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
UNIVERSITE NATIONALE DU BENIN
Abstract
Most extension services are actively engaged in promoting new technologies
among farmers. Resources are invested in various extensions activities, such as
field days or demonstrations, and extension service may undergo considerable
reorganization, such as the training and visit system (T & V) (Benor and Harrison
1977). There is a widespread need to place emphasis on monitoring the result of
technology transfer and eliciting farmers feedback. Organization responsible for
developing new technology need to know if the transfer process is functioning, if
their message is being heard. Base on this reasoning I choose to study adoption of
Mucuna as soil management crop in Benin.
SG2000 project started extension work on Mucuna as technology for
recovery of land invaded by imperata and striga and for improving fertility to over
exploited or poor soils in Benin since 1992. The major concerns for the study is:
suggest ways in which more farmers could adopt Mucuna as a soil fertility
management crop.
The target population for this study was Benin's farmers. Since the time and
the means can not permit to work with all of Benin's farmers, one region was
selected in each of the ecological zones of the country. In each region five
villages were selected using simple random sampling and in each village ten
farmers were selected at simple random sampling. To be sure that all our
respondents have equal chance to hear about the innovation (Mucuna for soil
management and weed control), the selected villages were those in which
SG2000 has an extension agent.
Frequencies and percentages were used in respect to demographic data
collected. Chi-square, were used to see whether there is a significant difference between selected regions, or if there is any relationship between adoption and
some selected variables or between innovation characteristics and farmers
adoption behavior.
This study conducted with the help of five field assistants lead to the
findings summarized as follow.
Majority of farmers selected (92 percent) were male, and 8 percent were
female. Age of respondents ranges from 20 years old to more than 40. Majority
of respondents (51.3%) have more than 40 year old. Average number of children
is seven. Majority of farmers (71.3%) are illiterate. Language spoken differ from
one area to an other. There are national extension services and NGO's which help
farmers to improve their farming conditions.
Analysis of data revealed primarily that there is a significant difference
between selected regions as far as adoption of Mucuna is concerned. Because of
land availability and efficiency of extension activities Borgou region offers to
farmers the best conditions to adopt Mucuna as soil management crop, compared
to others selected regions. Chi-square computation revealed that there is a
significant difference between the three selected regions with regards to extension
activities. Level of education do not have any significant relationship with adoption of
Mucuna therefore this innovation is consider not to be complex. Labor
availability has been found to have also a significant relationship with adoption of
Mucuna. Other socio-economic characteristics of farmers like: number of
children, marital status, age, land origin have no significant relationship with
adoption of Mucuna. All the variables used to measure extension influence on
adoption of Mucuna have a significant relationship with Mucuna adoption.
Participation to meeting organized by VEW, adequacy of training given by VEW,
clarity of the extension message for farmers, contact with extension agent were
found to have significant relation with adoption of Mucuna. It was also found that there is no significant difference between selected
regions as far as opinion of respondent about importance of the innovation is
concerned. Majority of the respondent recognize that fertility of their soil have
been improved after Mucuna fallow. They also know that Mucuna is not edible
but do not prevent it growing for soil improving. Analysis revealed that there is
no significant relationship between Mucuna edibility and its' adoption.The study
reveals that disadopters are those who don't have enough land or have problem of
labour. Some of them are those who got bad results from their first experience ;
their soil have not been improved or Mucuna couldn't irradicate spear grass of
their field.
As the study reveals, must of adopters are SG2000 contact farmers. This
shows that SG2000 strategy has improve adoption rate of Mucuna in Benin.
Strategy use by SG2000 offers good opportunity for farmers to make decision
after going through all the decision making process stages.
This study shows that promotion of Mucuna technology need to consider
sociological factors, environmental factors, and an adequate extension
methodology.
Description
Thesis(MPhil)-University of Ghana