Factors affecting adoption of improved sorghum varieties in Tanzania under information and capital constraints

Aloyce R Kaliba (), Kizito Mazvimavi, Theresia L Gregory, Frida M Mgonja and Mary Mgonja
Additional contact information
Aloyce R Kaliba: Southern University College
Kizito Mazvimavi: Southern University College
Theresia L Gregory: Southern University College
Frida M Mgonja: Southern University College
Mary Mgonja: Southern University College

Agricultural and Food Economics, 2018, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Abstract Low adoption of agricultural technology is among the main reasons for low farm productivity and high incidence of poverty and food insecurity in sub-Saharan countries including Tanzania. In this study, we examine the factors affecting adoption of improved sorghum varieties using data from 822 randomly selected sample households in northern and central Tanzania. We employ a multiple-hurdle Tobit model to assess the factors affecting adoption after controlling for both capital and information constraints. We also use t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding to cluster farmers into homogeneous groups. The method allows to reduce the dimensionality while preserving the topology of the dataset, which increases the clustering accuracy. It also superiors for visualization of the clustering results. Results show that radio and other mass media outlets that create awareness will increase adoption among farmers who do not face capital constraint. Some farmers lack basic resources such as land and capital, and subsidies could have a high impact on these farmers. Other farmers simply need assurance on the performance of improved sorghum varieties. Field days, on-farm trials, and demonstration plots could be useful in supporting these farmers. A tailored support system, however, needs a sustained investment in both quantity and quality of services. There is therefore a need to develop a pluralistic research and extension systems that encourage the use of information technologies and community-based organizations to reach specific groups of farmers.

Keywords: Adoption; Multiple-hurdle Tobit; Sorghum; t-SNE; Two-step cluster analysis; Tanzania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40100-018-0114-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agfoec:v:6:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s40100-018-0114-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nomics/journal/40100

DOI: 10.1186/s40100-018-0114-4

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural and Food Economics is currently edited by Alessandro Banterle, Liesbeth Dries, Andrea Marchini and Carlo Russo

More articles in Agricultural and Food Economics from Springer, Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().