Abstract

The study investigated the perceived risk-causing factors that affect adoption behaviour of crop farmers towards production technologies. The study was carried out in Delta State, Nigeria. With the aid of an interview schedule, 120 food crop farmers were multistage-randomly sampled. The study identified risk-causing factors as; production risk, price or market risk, financial and credit risk, institutional risk, technology and personal risks. The study showed that among the risk-causing factors ascertained, it is the economic and financial factors that were found to be regular factors, while environment, production and institutional factors were occasional factors. The farmers have high adoptive behaviour for improved land preparation (x? = 2.47), planting of early season crops (x? =2.7), Use of improved processing techniques (x? =2.34), and crop rotation (x? =2.33). Low adoptive behaviour was exhibited for chemical pests control device (x? =1.01), use of modern packaging techniques (x? =0.74), biological control of pest (x? =0.31), use of modern harvesting equipment (x? =0.37), and the use of modern storage technologies (x? =0.51). Further result of the study showed that the farmers perceived some risk-causing factors as having high and significant effects on their adoption behaviour towards production technologies. More than 50% of the identified risk-causing factors were perceived by the farmers to have effect on their adoption behaviour. The study subsequently recommends that more extension agents should be employed by the government, and farmers should have access to credit and capital opportunities.

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