Determinants of adoption of improved production practices among cotton producers in Kamuli District, Uganda

Adoption of improved cotton production practices generally has remained low among farmers in Uganda. This low adoption has remained a challenge to the revival of the cotton industry; the government in partnership with private sector players and donor agencies have over the years been on a promotion drive to popularize improved production practices in the area of plant configuration, pest and disease control, weed control and artificial fertilizer application in the cotton. Adoption of improved plant configuration and weed control practices has been found to be widespread, where as pest and disease control and fertilizer application has remained low. This study was therefore aimed at evaluating the factors affecting the adoption of these improved production practices among cotton farmers in Kamuli District. A multi-stage sampling technique that involved a combination of purposeful and random sampling procedures was used to select 200 cotton farmers in two counties of Budiope and Bugabula in Kamuli District. However, after data cleaning 181 questionnaires were found to have been fully filled and hence these were used for analysis. Farm-level data were collected and a multi - variate logit regression model was used to identify the significant factors that influenced the adoption of these practices. Results showed that adoption of these practices among cotton farmers’ was significantly influenced by factors like Farmer’s age, Household size, Farm area under cotton, Access to extension services, Farmer participation in trial demonstrations on the new practices, Farmer perceptions on relative advantage, compatibility and complexity of these practices compared to the traditional ones. The study therefore recommends that extension agents should be retrained and equipped with demonstration skills, introduce warehouse receipt scheme for the cotton subsector and reactivate the producer and marketing cooperative movement.