Factors Affecting Adoption Levels Of Cocoa Technologies In The Ashanti Region Of Ghana

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted at Fumso, Tepa, Offinso and Nkawie districts in the Ashanti Region of Ghana to investigate factors that affect farmers adoption of cocoa technologies. The factors that were considered in the study were sex, age, level of education and working experience. sources of labour, farmers' access to credit facilities, farmer contact with extension and participation in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of extension programmes were examined as well as relationship between farmers participation in extension programmes and adoption levels of cocoa technologies. The relationships between the demographic characteristics and adoption levels were further investigated. The results of the study revealed that most cocoa farmers in the study localities were male. A mean age of 54 years indicates that many of the farmers are old and ageing. A majority of them did not receive formal education but they have rich farming experience. Their mean working experience in years was 23 while the mode was 15 years. Sources of labour available to the farmers were family labour, hired labour, communal labour and caretaker labour. The farmers perceived the family labour as the most effective. Mean cost of labour per manday was approximately ¢5000.00 within a range of ¢3000.00 - ¢10,OOO.OO. The results further revealed a high cocoa farmers/FLS contacts, with a contact mean of 4 years. However, majority of the farmers received one visit in a month from the FLS. Farmer participation in extension programmes was also high in respect of planning, implementation and evaluation. The results further revealed that adoption levels of cocoa . technologies by cocoa farmers was high in the districts and in the Region as a whole. In the correlation analysis, relationship between farmer participation in planning, implementation and evaluation of extension programmes on adoption level of cocoa technologies was positively significant at .05 (5%) alpha level. The l1lIationships were also significant between age, level of education and wor1dng experience of cocoa farmers and adoption level of cocoa technologllls. Regressional analyses of significant variables, sex, level of education, number of monthly visits to farmer by FLS, farmer participation in planning, implementation and evaluation on adoption level revealed that the farmer participation in implementation was the best predictor of adoption level of cocoa technologies by the cocoa farmers. The conclusion was therefore that planners and executors of extension programmes in the Ashanti Region should focus more on involving farmers in implementation of programmes.