Assessment on Farmers’ Willingness to Adopt Improved Forage Production in South Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper was planned to analyze farmers’ willingness to adopt improved forage production that mainly aimed at identifying the social, institutional, economic and physical factors that affect the adoption and intensity of adoption for forage production; identifying farmers’ evaluation criteria for improved forage distribution and assessing alternative methods and strategies to enhance the use of improved forage varieties to improve the livestock feeding system. The data used for the empirical analysis was obtained from a survey of 56 household farmers in southern zone of Tigray. Kebeles and household farmers were selected using systematic random sampling and proportional sampling techniques and data was analyzed using a logistic regression model.  The results of this study show that variables related to age, education level, land tenure, farm size and level of income do not significantly affect the degree to which improved forage production is adopted. Other empirical studies also show that age, education level, the salinity level of water and membership in a farmers’ association do not significantly influence the degree to which salt-tolerant forage production is adopted (Ali Chebil, etal.,2009). On the other hand, labor constraint, membership in a farmers’ organization and the rate of extension advises significantly affect forage crop production. These variables have significant and positive relationship with forage adoption. This indicates that farmers’ that were members of any local organization and those had the access for frequent extension advice in addition to own labor resources have better adopted. So, agricultural extension services should ensure that farmers’ participation in various local organizations and frequent extension advises has to be strengthened to encourage them to adopt forage production and pass on their knowledge to other farmers.

Keywords: Adoption, feed, improved forage production, south Tigray