Links between Farmers’ Socio-demographics and Adoption of Soil Conservation Technologies in Hilly Terrains of Nandi County, Kenya

Abstract

Smallholder farms in Kenya continue to suffer from crop-productivity declines due to loss of soil quality as a result of soil erosion among other factors. Low adoption of soil conservation technologies persists in spite of previous interventions. This study was conducted to investigate links between farmers’ socio-demographic factors and the adoption of soil conservation technologies. The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. Purposive and multi-stage random sampling techniques were used to select a sample of 150 farmers from six catchment areas of the hilly terrain of Tinderet in Nandi County, Kenya. A total of 138 participants were accessed. Questionnaires administered by enumerators were used to collect data. Data was analysed to generate descriptive statistics. Kendall-Stuart Tau-c and Goodman-Kruskal’s gamma were used to estimate correlations between socio-demographic factors and adoption. Age, Gender, duration of residence and farm size were not significantly associated with adoption (P > 0.05).Education levels, household size, level of awareness and income were positively associated with adoption (Gamma =.359, P = .034), (Gamma = .229, P = .088), (Gamma = .485, P = .000) and (Gamma = .282, P = .042) respectively. It is recommended that stakeholders address soil erosion problems through farmers’ capacity-building, particularly for low-income farmers.

Farmers’ Social capital, Sources of Finances, Information and their implications on Maize Yields in a Rural Highland, Kenya

“…A mix that combines the use of extension and digital sources showed significantly higher productivity compared to 'extension only' (P= .000) as depicted in Figure 5. Previous studies suggest that formal education levels may have some positive influence on farmers' knowledge and adoption of new technologies (Cheruiyot, 2020) and, therefore could potentially influence farm productivity. To check on this potential compounding effect of education through its contribution to information, ANOVA was carried out for means between groups (based on information) while controlling for the education levels of the respondents.…”