Abstract:
Ethiopia is the second largest wheat producer in Sub Sahran Africa (SSA). Bread Wheat is
widely grown in Oromia region in general and Gedab Hasasa district in particular as food
and cash crop. However, the production and productivity of the crop in the study district is
lower than national average. Inadequate access to appropriate agricultural information and
utilization is one of the stumbling blocks for such reducing production and productivity of
bread wheat. Hence, the main goal of this study was to assess the level of farmers’ access to
and utilization of agricultural information and to identify factors affecting the access to and
utilization of agricultural information on bread wheat production package. In the course of
this study primary data were collected from sampled households who were engaged only in
bread wheat package users. In this study multistage sampling technique was employed. In the
first stage, four PAs were purposively and randomly selected based on high potential wheat
growers’ kebeles. In the second stage, on the basis of statistical random sampling techniques
of probability proportional to size (PPS) of the number of farmers, 138 sample respondents
were randomly drawn from the list of farmers in each chosen kebeles. With regard to data
type, both primary and secondary data were collected. Primary data were collected from
respondents through prepared personal interview scheduleand FDG and secondary data were
from Woreda Office of Agriculture and Rural Development. Data were analyzed using
qualitative methods, descriptive statistics and ordered logit model. As a descriptive statistics,
mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, and range was used. In relation to statistical
tests, one way ANOVA, F-value, Chi-square and spearman’s raho were applied. To identify
determinants factors of information access and utilization among the wheat package users,
ordered logit model was used. With regard to econometric model, of the 11 hypothesized
variables, 8 variables such as, age of households, family size, on-farm income, achievement
motivation, access to market, social participation, extension participation and access to credit
were found to be significant in explaining the access categories. Five variables such as land
holding size, on-farm income, off-farm income, access to credit and extension participation
were found to be significant in explaining the utilization categories. Therefore, policy and
development interventions should give emphasis to improvement of such institutional support
system so as to achieve wider access, utilization, increased productivity and income of small
scale farmers.
