Socio-economic and Farm-level Characteristics Influencing Adoption of Rice Production Technologies in Lavun Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria

The study examined the socio-economic and farm level characteristics influencing adoption of rice production technologies in Lavun Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria. A total of 76 farmers were randomly selected from 24 villages and data were collected using interview schedule. Descriptive statistics, adoption index and discriminate analysis were used to analyze data. The result revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 38.70 years, while the average farm size of the respondents was 2.4 hectares. Also, 40.78% of respondents acquired one form of formal education or the other ranging from primary to tertiary education. The result further showed that more than half of the respondents (53.95%) were not members of co-operative associations. Majority of respondents (52.26%) were medium adopters of existing technologies. The study also indicated that estimated farm income, farm size, number of rice farms cultivated, number of visit to market, distance of residence to market and farming experience discriminate between categories of adopters. It was therefore suggested that avenue should be provided for favourable price to farmers to increase their farm income to enable them adopt improved technologies, while special agricultural programmes should be organize on rotational basis to take care of less mobile farmers.