Adoption of improved sesame varieties in Meisso District, West Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia

Achieving national food security and diversifying e xport earning agricultural commodity is one of the major challenges currently facing develo ping countries like Ethiopia. Oils crop in general and sesame crop in particular play a great role in improving household’s food security, increasing income for the local populatio n and export earnings for the country. Despite the high production potential and the econo mic importance of the crop, sesame producers particularly small scale farmers did not economically much benefited from its production. Low production and productivity, which is mainly associated with poor adoption of improved technologies and poor marketing system, was among the major problems. To this end, the objectives of this study were: to assess the relative financial profitability of improved sesame varieties, to assess the perception of farme rs about improved sesame varieties attributes and to explore the contribution of farme -to-farmer knowledge sharing to adoption decision and finally to determine the relative impo rtance of the various factors associated with adoption of improved sesame varieties. For thi s study, a three stage of sampling procedure was employed to select the sample househo lds. First, Meisso district was purposively selected. At the second stage, four PAs were randomly selected among sesame growers PAs using random sampling method. Finally, 140 sample respondents were selected from the sampling frame based on probability propor tional to size of sesame growers (PPS) random sampling method. In this study, data were ob tained from 140 randomly selected households through personal interview conducted by trained enumerators using pre-tested interview schedule and from group and individual di scussions, as well as the researcher’s personal observations. In addition, secondary data were collected from relevant sources such as research, zonal and district office of agricultu re and others. In order to describe and compare different categories of the sample units wi h respect to the desired characteristics, mean, standard deviation and percentage were comput ed. Furthermore, chi-square and an independent sample t-test were used to identify var iables that vary significantly between adopters and non-adopter.Logistic regression (binar y logit) analysis was used to identify the relative importance of the various factors associat ed with adoption of improved sesame varieties. The economic analysis using the partial budgeting method and price sensitivity analysis was also used to ascertain the profitabili ty of the adopted improved sesame technologies. The result of the study indicated tha t about 42.9% of the sample respondents were adopters of the improved sesame varieties, whi le 57.1 % nonadopters.The survey result also revealed that knowledge/information from farme r to farmer knowledge sharing at their work and market place was found to exert a signifi cant impact on the probability of improved sesame varieties adoption by farmers. This was due to the farmers perceived that the information is most relevant, trusted and frequentl y accessible for the farmers decision making to adopt improved sesame technology. Innovat ive farmers are not only as source of knowledge of technology but also they are the sourc e of improved seed for the majority of the adopters in the study area.Results of the logistic regression analysis indicate that among ,18