This paper examines factors influencing the adoption of improved maize seeds and the use of inorganic fertilizer for maize production by farmers in the intermediate and lowland zones of Tanzania. The results indicate that availability of extention services, on -farm field trials, variety characteristics and rainfall were the most important factors that influcented the extent of adopting improved maize seeds and the use of inorganic fertilizer for maize production. Farmers preferred those varieties which minimize field loss rather than maximizing yields. Future research and extension policies should empahsize farmer participation in the research process and on-farm field trials for varietal evaluation and demonstration purposes.
Evaluation of the factors influencing the adoption of agricultural and natural resource management technologies among small farmers in developing countries have been mostly limited to qualitative discussions or simple descriptive statistics resulting in superficial and inconclusive findings. This study introduces the use of Poisson Count Regressions as a statistically appropriate procedure to analyze certain common types of adoption data. It uses them to assess the impact of key socio-economic, bio-physical, and institutional factors on the adoption of integrated pest management, agroforestry, and soil conservation technologies among small farmers in three Central American countries: Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador
