Adoption of Irrigated Rice Production in Fadama Soils : Evaluation of Factors Influencing Farmer's Adoption of Irrigated Rice Production in Fadama Soils

There has been a break in water cycle, decline in rainfall over the years due to climate change. This leads to relative increases in water demand for agricultural production. Despite the fact that irrigation agriculture is capital intensive and labour expensive, farmers seem to persist on irrigated rice cultivation. It was also observed that even though the average land holding of a farmer was half a hectare, farmers seem to adopt similar crops for many years without diversification. Presently, there was no any work or comprehensive information regarding the factors influencing farmers' adoption of irrigated rice production in the Fadama areas. The result of logit regression model shows a statistical significance (P > 0.01) of the X1. It indicates that holding other variables constant, if years of experience increase by a unit, on the average, the logit of the odds in favour of sole rice production increases by 5.33 units. Other variables such as level of education influence adoption as it eases understanding, interpretation and acceptance of the newly introduced techniques. This work should be useful to agricultural experts or anybody interested in irrigated rice production.