Farmer participation in dissemination activities and adoption of improved maize varieties around Bulindi agricultural research and development institute in Uganda

Abstract

Whereas Public Agricultural Research Institutes (PARIs) in Uganda are mandated to generate and promote agricultural technologies, their immediate neighborhood does not exhibit evidence of adoption of those technologies. PARIs such as the Bulindi Zonal Agricultural Research Institute (BuZARDI) use a variety of approaches to reach out and promote their technologies namely; field days on farm and off-farm, demonstration gardens and socio media platforms like face book, YouTube and Twitter. It would ordinarily be expected that farmers in the neighborhood would have easy access to the technologies promoted and disseminated by BuZARDI and therefore adopt but observations and empirical studies present evidence of the contrary. This study traces the adoption of Improved Maize Varieties (IMVs) generated by the National Agricultural Organization (NARO) to characterize the adopters and non-adopters in terms of their farmer characteristics, socio-economic and institutional factors. A cross-sectional survey of 242 randomly selected maize farmers was conducted within a radius of six kilometers from the institute. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data to answer questions on the first objective on level of participation of maize farmers in the dissemination activities, perceptions of maize farmers towards the NARO-IMVs and the differences between farmer adopters and non-adopters based on their farmer, socio-economic and institutional characteristics. Results reveal that 51% of the sample maize farmers did not participate in any of the dissemination activities of the institute despite their proximity implying that they were not exposed to the available technologies. Those who adopted the IMVs also participated in field days (97.5%), demonstrations (53.4%), and NARO-sociomedia platforms (6.8%). Overall, an increase in farmer participation in one of the dissemination activities increased the likelihood of adoption of IMVs by 16%. The majority (74.3%) of the farmers were made aware of the dissemination activities via interaction with fellow farmers. Some of the farmers who participated in the dissemination activities gave their perceptions about the attributes of NARO-IMVs. Attributes such as tolerance to drought, resistance to lodging and shattering on harvest, good marketing attributes like taste, big maize cobs, ability to produce 2-3 cobs per plant were perceived to positively influence adoption while intolerance to pests and diseases, incomplete husk cover, unaffordability of the seeds, low yields without fertilizer application were perceived to negatively influence adoption. Therefore, the breeders in NARO should aim at developing varieties with multiple attributes preferred by farmers and also increase awareness about the dissemination activities.