Factors Limiting Adoption of Technologies by Farmers in Catabola Municipality, Angola

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to define the factors influencing the adoption of animal traction and/or mechanical-power technology in the conditions of Catabola municipality where hand-tool technology is being used on 99.7% of the area cultivated by small farmers. Primary data collection was conducted in the period July-August 2011; semi-structured questionnaires and focus group discussions were the most frequent methods used. In total, 151 small-scale farmers from 9 villages participated in the survey. Ten factors influencing the dependent variable - level of technology used by farmers in combination with hiring of labour - were defined. The factors were statistically analyzed by ANOVA. The area of cultivated land and the educational level of both parents and children were found to be the factors limiting the process of animal traction or mechanical power adoption by small farmers in the Catabola municipality. In addition, a relatively high rate of child labour was observed. With the exclusion of childless families, 62.7% of small farmer families regularly use children aged 0-14 years for field operations. The results confirm that the factor of hiring extra labour is irrelevant in determining the development in technology use by small farmers in the Catabola municipality.