Adoption and Feedback Provision on Irrigation Technologies Among Farmers in Nigeria

摘要

The effort in Nigeria to minimize the constraint of water as an input in agricultural production has led to the development of irrigation technologies by agricultural research institutes. This is based on the premise that irrigated agriculture has the potential to relieve the food insecurity in Nigeria. This paper examines the adoption of these irrigation technologies and the provision of feedback on these technologies to extension agents who disseminated them and the researchers who developed the technologies. Semi-arid and arid zones of Nigeria were covered in the study. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 320 farmers. An interview schedule based on structured questionnaire was used to elicit information on the adoption and provision of feedback on irrigation technologies. The results of the study show that out of the 27 different irrigation technologies listed in the questionnaire only 10 were prominent among farmers. These are wash bore and tube well (93.43%), Treadle pump motorization (87.50%), sprinkler rotating(94.06%), sprinkler perforated(72.81%), gravity irrigation(62.19%), pitcher irrigation(27.18%), irrigation channel(96.88%), border strip(66.25%), ring check basin(53.13%), and subsurface irrigation(49.28%). Majority of the farmers also indicate that they provide feedback inform of criticism (96.88%) and observation (94.06%) on the technologies to extension agents and researchers through individual contact (87.50%) and correspondence( 72.81%). From the multiple regression analysis (R2 0.72), about 72 percent of feedback provision by farmers was explained by gender, age., farm size, cost of technology and ancillary cost of adoption. Ancillary cost of adoption is the most significant predictor with a better value of 0.53. The paper concludes on the need for organized efforts to obtaining feedback from farmers as it obtains in the dissemination of research results