Abstract:
Teff is one of the cereals grown in most agro-ecological zones of Ethiopia and mainly used for food consumption. It ranks first in area coverage and second after maize in total production. In the county where teff accounted for about 28.7% of the total grain cultivated land, a little yield increment makes a difference in this regard. This can be possible through adoption of the existing teff technologies. Teff technology packages with recently released improved teff varieties have been introduced in the study area. However significant number of farmers are not using these varieties and those who use these improved varieties are not fully applying the recommended package. Adoption of improved teff varieties with recommended packages have not studied in Yilmana Densa district and it is also rarely studied in the Amhara region. Thus, this study was conducted to assess adoption and intensity of use of tef technology package in Yilmana Densa district.
Twenty-five teff growing kebele were purposively selected and out of which 4 kebele were selected using systematic random sampling. Out of 4 kebele, a total of 204 sample respondents were randomly selected and interviewed using semi-structured interview schedule. In addition, secondary data were collected from relevant sources. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed by STATA (V.14) software to analyze the adoption and intensity of adoption. The result of the study indicated that majority of farmers (60.12%) in the study area are currently growing Kora, Abola, Boset and Etsub teff varieties. Teff producer farmers were found to adopt almost all the recommended management practices for teff production while there are variations among themselves in intensity of adoption. Result of the first double hurdle model revealed that education status, labor availability, on farm income, access to market information and training were found to influence the adoption positively where as distance to the district influenced negatively. In the second double hurdle model participation in nonfarm activities, oxen owned and credit utilization, affected adoption intensity positively where as age, land owned and distance to the district affected negatively. Therefore, policy and development interventions should give emphasis to providing adult education, teff package training, enabling farmers to get market information, improving road system, making credit inexpensive, demonstrating recently released improved teff varieties or technologies to increase awareness and improve farmer’s perception positively should be given due emphasis to increase adoption and intensity of adoption of improved teff technology package.
Keywords: adoption, double hurdle, perception, Yilmana densa