Effectiveness Of Communication Channels And Smallholder Farmers’ Adoption Of Improved Legume Technologies: A Case Of Morogoro Region, Tanzania

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Legume crops play important roles economically, socially and environmentally by providing jobs, being a cheap source of protein, improving health and nutrition, improving soil fertility, weed suppression and nitrogen fixation. However, it is yet to be clearly determined as to which approach or a combination of approaches that are effective in ensuring legume technologies are disseminated across the various farming groups. The current study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of awareness creation approaches on level of knowledge, adoption and willingness of smallholder farmers to pay for improved legume technologies and explore other factors associated with adoption and willingness to pay for the technologies in Gairo and Mvomero districts. The study adopted a crosssectional research design whereby data were collected once from Gairo and Mvomero Districts, Morogoro, Tanzania. The districts were purposively selected due to a number of multimedia approaches and other extension methods that had been used to raise farmers’ awareness of improved legume technologies. A total of 400 respondents participated in this study of whom about two thirds were from the area of intervention and a third were from the area with no intervention. Primary data was collected through a questionnaire, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Data was analysed using SPSS whereby descriptive and inferential statistics were determined. Results show that smallholder farmers were aware of all the technologies assessed and the level of awareness differed across the treatments. Factors significantly associated with smallholder farmers awareness were availability of legume technology intervention (P