A survey of information on adoption and continued use of agricultural technology innovations among smallholder crop farmers in Benue state Nigeria

Abstract

This work aims at determining the factors that shape adoption and continued use of agricultural technology innovations by smallholder crop farmers in Benue State Nigeria. A structured interview schedule was used to collect relevant data. Method of analysis involves frequency counts and percentages. The result shows that factors relating to propensity to adopt are education, land size, access to credit, access to extension services and cost of innovation among others while the same factors apply for continued use of agricultural innovation except land size and gender. The extent of adoption of high yielding variety of crops, disease resistant varieties, and equipment for spraying, chemical fertilizer, pesticide, fungicide, insecticide and herbicide were very high. The extent of support on agricultural technology innovation was very poor. It is recommended that need assessment surveys be carried out before the introduction of agricultural technology innovation to guarantee adoption and continued use.