Technology Adoption by Small Holder Fish Farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Siyanbola A Omitoyin and Aishat A Adediran

New technologies in aquaculture are seen as an important route out of poverty and means to ensure rural development and food security in most of the developing countries in Africa including Nigeria. Numerous initiatives have been directed at technological innovation and transfer but the rate of adoption of these technologies has remained low in African continent leading to low aquaculture production and therefore inadequate to achieve transformational change envisaged to impact food security. This study therefore aims at examining the factors that influence fish farmer’s perceptions, and behaviors toward adoption of modern technology and to determine the perceived effect of adopted technologies on farmers’ production and food security.

A multi stage sampling technique was used to select 200 respondents’ base on ADP zoning. Primary data was collected with the aid of well-structured questionnaires administered to the sampled fish farmers while secondary data was obtained from the internet, textbooks, journals etc. The questionnaire was used to obtain information on the socio economic characteristics of the fish farmers, their level of adoption of technology in aquaculture, the impact of the technology adopted and their challenges. Descriptive analysis (mean, frequency distribution, simple proportion and percentage) and inferential analysis (Chi square and Multiple linear regression Analysis) was used to analyze the data obtained.

The gender distribution shows that 88% of the respondents were male with mean age of 43.6± 8.972 years, 67% have tertiary education while the household size of 4-6 members with mean 6.05±2.406 was in the majority. Only 13.5% were into fish farming as primary occupation while 67% had fish farming as secondary occupation. The size of fish farm shows that 54.5% of the respondents have less than 0.5 hectares’ size fish farm. The result of the Chi-squared analysis shows that there is a significant association between adoption of recommended aquaculture production technologies and educational level (X2 = 16.12, p<0.05), marital status (X2 = 15.94, p<0.05) and occupation (X2 = 13.12, p<0.05). High cost of acquisition of technology with mean value of 2.850 was identified as a major limiting factor to Technology adoption followed by poor access to capital with mean value of 2.825. The result of the regression analysis show that the determinants of adoption of aquaculture production technologies were age, educational status, fishing experience and income. These coefficients were positive and statistically significant for the fish farmers at 10%. To facilitate uptake of technologies and good practices by fish farmers, cost of acquisition of technology should be reduced, low cost adaptive technology should be encouraged while access to capital should be facilitated.

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