Does farm size drive willingness to adopt farm technology? A case of improved varieties with a higher nutritional content in Morogoro rural areas, Tanzania

The study assessed the influence of farm size on adoption of improved varieties containing a high nutrition content and also determined other factors that are influencing adoption of improved vari-eties in rural areas. Data were collected from farmers in Kilombero and Mvomero Districts, Morogoro. The two districts were selected as they are the Food LAND Project Food Hubs. A two-stage sampling procedure was applied to come up with a total sample size of 911 farmers. A Binary Logit was used to assess the influence of farm size and other factors influencing adoption of im-proved varieties. A Multiple Linear Regression Model was also applied to determine various fac-tors influencing farm size. , The results also show that the determinants of adoption of improved varieties differ from one district to another. For example, farm size was found to influence technol-ogy adoption in Kilombero while it was not in Mvomero. Using a Multiple Linear regression model the results revealed that farm size is influenced by farmer’s  willingness to adopt an improved tech-nology in Kilombero. Other factors were the number of adult family labour involved in agriculture, mobile access, farmer's age, cooperatives and quantity produced for both Kilombero and Mvo-mero. Factors such as gender were also the determinants of farm size in Mvomero. To increase farmer’s willingness to adopt improved technologies, the study recommends that, the government should find means of making land available to people, especially to young farmers who appear not to have enough land for cultivation. There is also a need to improve financial services to have easy credit accessibility, especially for small-scale farmers. Moreover, the government needs to provide incentives to small-scale farmers so that they can be able to adopt different agricultural technolo-gies introduced and improve their livelihood.