The spatial diffusion of agricultural innovations in Kisii District, Kenya

Due to the failure of the modern sector of the economy to generate sufficient employment opportunities and the rapid growth of its cities, particularly Nairobi, the Kenya government has placed greater emphasis on rural development. It is hoped that greater attention to agriculture and to the rural areas will increase the production of food, create more jobs in the rural areas and thus slow down rural to urban migration. Previous plans for employment and food production expansion based on opening new lands have been abandoned primarily because of the high cost. Instead, intensification of production on presently used land will be the focus of efforts by the Kenya government. In order to intensify production it is necessary of course, to change current practices and change will require the farmer to accept new techniques, technical inputs or crops, all of which can be classified as innovations. Therefore, the study of innovation diffusion is intimately related to the problem of agricultural in-tensification. Geographers have generally confined their spatial diffusion research to the developed countries, to the neglect of the developing countries. A gap therefore exists in the literature concerning the developing countries This study is an empirical investigation of the spatial diffusion of five new crops and grade cattle in a densely populated, high agricultural potential area of Kisii District, Kenya. The innovations investigated Are coffee, pyrethrum, tea, passion fruit, hybrid maize and grade cattle. The data consist of 1935 short interviews conducted in 93 different sampling areas to determine when farmers first adopted the Innovations in question and 485 long interviews ascertaining socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the farmers. A total of 55 computer maps, using the SYMAP technique, were produced to depict the spatial diffusion pattern for each innovation over time. These maps show the distribution of adoption per-centage levels every two years from the time of original introduction to 1970, plus a final map for 1971. The general diffusion pattern is as follows: (1) initially low levels of adoption are found at scattered locations, (2) an outward spread at low levels of adoption occurs, (3) the emergence of peaks of higher levels of adoption, and finally (4) the coalescence of these peaks into broad areas of high percentages of adoption. The forward edge of the diffusion wave moves very rapidly outward to encompass much of the final area of adoption in about half the time period. After the initial spread, the gradient between no adoption and the highest levels becomes progressively steeper. Factor analysis of 57 geographic, socio-economic, demographic and innovation-measuring variables reveals little relationship between the innovation measures and the non-innovation variables as the latter primarily factor out by themselves or with the geographic variables. The principal determinant influencing the location of greatest intensity of adoption and use is the place of original introduction. Thus, the mass media communication channels and extension services are of minimal importance while person-to-person communication, as exemplified by the Personal Information Field, is the major moving force behind the spatial diffusion process. Recommendations for policy planners and suggestions for further research are also given.