Adoption Intensity of Digital Climate-Smart Agricultural Techniques (D-CSA) Among Dry-Season Female Vegetable Farmers in Nigeria: A Pathway to Climate-Resilient Farming
摘要
Changes in climate have had an impact on humanity, most significantly farmers, by lowering the yield levels of their crops. The slow adoption of digital climate-smart agricultural technologies needed to mitigate the effect of climate change among farmers frequently frustrates technological growth and promotional efforts by agricultural stakeholders. This study investigated the adoption intensity of Digital Climate-Smart Agricultural Techniques (D-CSA) among dry-season female vegetable farmers in Imo State, investigated their level of awareness of the D-CSA technology applications available to them, and assessed the various barriers hindering their adoption of the D-CSA technologies. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis was applied to 120 dry-season female vegetable farmers. We find new evidence from the results that age, relationship with extension officers, and the level of education attained by the dry-season female vegetable farmers were the major drivers of their adoption intensity of D-CSA technologies. In addition, we observed that there was a low level of awareness of the various applications of D-CSA techniques among the farmers. Furthermore, we observed that the main obstacle faced by the farmers in adopting D-CSA technologies was a lack of access to mobile phones and reliable internet. These issues were compounded by the inability to use D-CSA technologies and a general lack of trust in digital information among others. The findings demonstrate the necessity for improved extension services, user-friendly technologies tailored to meet the peculiarities of dry-season female vegetable farmers in order to overcome these challenges and promote a better roadmap towards a climate-resilient farming system in Nigeria.