Abstract

The study was on the extent and adoption determinants of floating tray technology by small holder tobacco farmers in Bindura District of Mashonaland province. The objectives of the study were to determine the extent of adoption, identify adoption determinants that influence farmer’s decision to take up floating trays. The study aimed also to identify challenges and opportunities of the floating trays. Questionnaires, focus group discussion and observations were used to gather data. The enumerator had face to face interviews with the farmers and clarified areas were the farmers need clarity on issues in the questionnaire. The logit regression model was used to determine the factors that influence adoption decision. Descriptive statistics was also used to analyse the challenges and opportunities. The major challenges were identified as high costs of technology and lack of capital with reduced input costs as an opportunity. Factors that influence farmers’ decision to adopt floating tray technology were identified and these include training, educational status and off-farm hours. Age, training and off-farm hours were found to have significant influence on the adoption decision. Results show that training of the household head has a significant impact as shown by the marginal effect of 0.041. Since tobacco seedling using floating tray system is too costly and requires too much capital to establish, the researcher’s hypothesis that there are challenges and opportunities in using floating tray system was not rejected. Recommendations made were to advocate for intervention in the provision of low cost or subsidize the floating tray system for the small holder tobacco farmers to increase the adoption of floating tray system.

Key words: Adoption, float trays, logit regression model.