Crop Technology Adoption Among Rural Farmers in Some Selected Regions of Mali

Enhancing farm production through an application of modern crop technologies to the extant farm system is relevant to improving the lives of farmers in rural areas. The Ecofarm crop technologies are some of the technologies that have been introduced with the aim of improving the lives of rural farmers in Mali. The study was carried out to examine the elements that influenced the adoption decisions of Ecofarm technologies among rural farmers in three selected regions of Mali. It contributes to the present knowledge on the socioeconomic factors that influence farmers in their adoption decisions of crop technologies in dry-land crop growing areas. Through the application of a multi-stage sampling technique, data were collected from 120 rural farmers from the three study regions. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Cost-Benefit analyses were employed to analyze the data. It was evident that household size positively determined the adoption decisions of rural farmers in these regions. Also, the distance to these Ecofarm technologies had influence on the adoption decisions in that, the proximity of these technologies to the farms induced the rural farmers to adopt them. Interestingly, it was also found out that the larger the land holding of the farmers, the less likely it was for them to adopt the Ecofarm technologies. It was concluded that the regions with greater net benefits after the adoption were adopting more of Ecofarm crop technologies than those with less net benefit.