Adoption Of Mucuna {Mucuna Utilis) As Soil Management Crop In Republic Of Benin.

ABSTRACT Most extension services are actively engaged in promoting new technologies among farmers. Resources are invested in various extensions activities, such as field days or demonstrations, and extension service may undergo considerable reorganization, such as the training and visit system (T & V) (Benor and Harrison 1977). There is a widespread need to place emphasis on monitoring the result of technology transfer and eliciting farmers feedback. Organization responsible for developing new technology need to know if the transfer process is functioning, if their message is being heard. Base on this reasoning I choose to study adoption of Mucuna as soil management crop in Benin. SG2000 project started extension work on Mucuna as technology for recovery of land invaded by imperata and striga and for improving fertility to over exploited or poor soils in Benin since 1992. The major concerns for the study is: suggest ways in which more farmers could adopt Mucuna as a soil fertility management crop. The target population for this study was Benin's farmers. Since the time and the means can not permit to work with all of Benin's farmers, one region was selected in each of the ecological zones of the country. In each region five villages were selected using simple random sampling and in each village ten farmers were selected at simple random sampling. To be sure that all our respondents have equal chance to hear about the innovation (Mucuna for soil management and weed control), the selected villages were those in which SG2000 has an extension agent. Frequencies and percentages were used in respect to demographic data collected. Chi-square, were used to see whether there is a significant difference vi between selected regions, or if there is any relationship between adoption and some selected variables or between innovation characteristics and farmers adoption behavior. This study conducted with the help of five field assistants lead to the findings summarized as follow. Majority of farmers selected (92 percent) were male, and 8 percent were female. Age of respondents ranges from 20 years old to more than 40. Majority of respondents (51.3%) have more than 40 year old. Average number of children is seven. Majority of farmers (71.3%) are illiterate. Language spoken differ from one area to an other. There are national extension services and NGO's which help farmers to improve their farming conditions. Analysis of data revealed primarily that there is a significant difference between selected regions as far as adoption of Mucuna is concerned. Because of land availability and efficiency of extension activities Borgou region offers to farmers the best conditions to adopt Mucuna as soil management crop, compared to others selected regions. Chi-square computation revealed that there is a significant difference between the three selected regions with regards to extension activities. Level of education do not have any significant relationship with adoption of Mucuna therefore this innovation is consider not to be complex. Labor availability has been found to have also a significant relationship with adoption of Mucuna. Other socio-economic characteristics of farmers like: number of children, marital status, age, land origin have no significant relationship with adoption of Mucuna. All the variables used to measure extension influence on adoption of Mucuna have a significant relationship with Mucuna adoption. Participation to meeting organized by VEW, adequacy of training given by VEW, clarity of the extension message for farmers, contact with extension agent were found to have significant relation with adoption of Mucuna.