Country Report – DT Maize Adoption Monitoring Survey- Zimbabwe. Socio-Economics Program Working Paper

Abstract

Maize is a very important crop in Zimbabwe both for food and income. Even though Zimbabwe is one of the countries with highest adoption rates of hybrid varieties, threats from climate change and other stresses have been responsible for a reduction in maize productivity. Given the importance of maize not only in Zimbabwe but the whole subSaharan Africa, CIMMYT under the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project has been developing Drought tolerant (DT) maize varieties to reduce maize production vulnerability to climate change and improve food security. This study aims to assess the levels of adoption of the new DT maize varieties by smallholder farmers and draw lessons on the constraints that are affecting farmers to adopt these new maize varieties. This study was carried out in 6 of 60 districts in Zimbabwe. This covered five (out of eight) provinces namely Masvingo, Midlands, Matebeleland North ,Mashonaland East and Mashonaland Central. The study has shown that maize productivity is low across all districts and there is limited irrigation in communal area. There is also limited fertilizer use across all districts except for Chivi and Umguza given the types of the soils that exist in these areas. In terms of food self- sufficiency, results show that households are not self-sufficient in maize and a high proportion of the households did not produce maize to last them at least 12 months. The study found out that 20.2% of sampled farmers had started growing DT maize varieties in 2010. It was interesting to note that there was a varied definition DT maize varieties. There was a high proportion of farmers who thought DT maize were varieties that were able to tolerate dry spells (39%) while others thought DT varieties tolerate dry spells and mature early (40%). Only 20% thought that they were varieties with early maturity period. Such diversity on knowledge of the DT maize varieties has implication on the adoption decision of the households. The importance of information on new maize seed was found to be positive and highly significant (p < 0.001) in influencing adoption. Other important factors affecting adoption of the new DT maize varieties were availability of the new varieties on the market and high cost of the seed that made the varieties unfordable. The key issue emerging from this study is that people are interested in using the DT maize but there seems to be a gap in knowledge on these varieties that are available on the market. There is need for increased information dissemination on the DT maize varieties that have been released to date. Price reduction could be addressed by increasing number of seed companies thereby increasing competition and efficiency of seed production. This is likely to lower the seed prices on the market.