Ex-Ante adoption analysis for improved sorghum varieties in the Lake Zone Tanzania.

Abstract

The majority of adoption studies have focused on the description of past adoption behavior and the preferences of farmers. There have been limited efforts to predict adoption of new technologies, while preferences of market consumers are invariably omitted. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of production and consumption characteristics of improved sorghum varieties on farmers’ adoption decisions. Thirty-four farmers and 231 consumers evaluated five sorghum varieties to determine their preferences. The perceptions of the farmers and consumers were summarized and presented to 100 sorghum farmers to help them choose the best varieties, based on results obtained earlier. Ordered probit models were used to predict their adoption decisions. Results indicated that when adoption is predicted on production characteristics alone the adoption rate was lower than when prediction incorporated both production and consumption characteristics of the sorghum varieties. Therefore, when disseminating new technologies farmers need to be informed about the production as well as the consumption characteristics of the new technologies. The outcomes of this study imply that involving producers and consumers in the generation of new agricultural technologies would potentially increase their adoption rates when they are disseminated. Thus a subsector analytical approach is recommended.