Determinants of adoption of maize post-harvest handling technologies among smallholder farmers: a case of Kibaale district

Abstract

Maize is a major staple crop produced and consumed by the majority population in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Uganda being part of SSA, has been ranked 19th top maize producing county in the world and the second in East Africa. Production of maize had increased from 2.8 million MT (2015) to 4 million MT (2017). Despite the steady production of maize over the past years, post-harvest losses of maize remained the highest, up to 17.6% in some of rural areas (FAO, 2020) which require postharvest handling technologies to mitigate it. In this respect, the main objective of the current study was to determine factors influencing adoption of maize Post-harvest technologies among smallholder farmers in Kibaale district of Uganda. The structured and semi structure questionnaires were used in collecting the primary data from 100 randomly selected smallholder farmers. The Logit model was used to determine factors of adoption maize post harvest handling technologies among small holder farmers and the results indicate that, education level, access to credit, age , household size, off farm income found to have a significant effect on the adoption of maize post-harvest technologies Therefore, it is recommended that, provision of education through extension services ,post-harvest training and post-harvest handling tools such as hermetic storage and combined harvesters be encouraged. Key words: Maize; Post-harvest handling technology, Smallholder Farmers, Uganda