Adoption of Improved Technologies in Maize-based Cropping Systems on Income of Farmers in Ondo State, Nigeria

This study examined the effect of adoption of improved technologies in maize-based cropping systems on income of farmers in Ondo state, Nigeria. It specifically identified the socio-economic characteristics, determine the intensity of adoption of improved technologies introduced to maize-based farmers and examine the effect of adoption of improved technologies introduced to maize-based farmers on their income in the study area. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to obtain data from 160 maize-based farmers that were selected from 3 Local Government Areas in Ondo State. Descriptive Statistical Analysis, Budgetary Technique Analysis and Tobit Regression Analysis were used to analyze the data. Results on socio-economic characteristics disclosed that most (59.82 percent) of the respondents were relatively old (more than 50 years) with the mean age of 54.76 years. Also, 50.63 percent of the respondents had between 5 and 8 members in their households. It was revealed that only 29.62 percent of the respondents had secondary education and above. The farmers were well experienced with 65 percent of them having more than 20 years of farming experience and 73.75 percent of them had less than 2 hectares of land as farm size. The result of profitability analysis shows that the total revenue, gross margin and net farm income for the improved technology adopters are N750,450, N573,130 and N52,1940 respectively. On the other hand, the total revenue, gross margin and net farm income for the non-adopters of improved technology are N320,140, N244,180and N 227,830 respectively, implying that improved technology adopters performed way better than non-adopters in terms of total revenue, gross margin and total cost. The determinants of intensity of adoption of improved technologies in the study area as shown by Tobit regression estimate revealed that age, extension access, farming experience, marital status, household size, farm size and educational level were statistically significant, implying that they are the important variables found to greatly influence the intensity of adoption of improved technologies by maize-based farmers in Ondo state. It is therefore recommended that policy option requires the traditional technology users to embrace the improved agricultural technologies in order to increase their earning per unit of land cultivated should be introduced.