Determinants of improved agricultural technology adoption in Tanzania a case study of maize smallholder farmers

Agriculture is one of the growth sectors in Tanzania, i.e. sectors which contribute more to the growth of the economy and have larger impacts on poverty reduction. The sector significantly contributes to the country’s GDP, employment and food security. Smallholder farmers’ use of improved technologies in agriculture is still relatively low compared to other countries with similar conditions. This has led to both low crop productivity and production in which maize is no exception. The study’s objective is to investigate factors that influence the adoption of improved agricultural technology among smallholder maize farmers in Tanzania. The study uses Probit model and a sample size of 39,047 households from the 2007/08 NASC data collected by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The three improved agricultural technologies considered in this study are improved seeds, inorganic fertilizers and irrigation farming. Descriptive statistics analysis indicates that of all the three technologies, improved maize seed was mostly adopted, followed by inorganic fertilizer while irrigation farming came last. The Probit results indicate education level of household head and access to extension services, credit and ICT to have positive and significant effects on the adoption of individual technologies or all the three together. Moreover, the primary determinant of all the technologies is access to extension services. The study recommends both government and private sectors interventions in promoting the development of rural credit markets, increased reach of extension officers to rural smallholder farmers, provision of education and training and expanding communication services especially to underserved rural areas.