Farm Mechanization Innovation Capacity and Rice Productivity: Evidence from Small Scale Rice Farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria

Rice is a staple diet eaten by more than fifty percent of households in the whole world. There is a deficit currently in the demand- supply production of rice when carefully observed and this is traceable to the use of crude implements and traditional methods of farming. It is to this effect that this study addresses farm mechanization innovation and rice productivity using small scale rice farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria. A total of 261 rice farmers were used for this study out of which only 78 rice farmers adopted the farm mechanization innovation while 183 rice farmers did not. The focus group discussion (FGD) employed revealed that majority of the rice farmers do not have capacity for farm mechanization, hence the low adoption of the innovation. The FGD revealed that 65.90percent of the rice farmers had medium innovation capacity, 28.74percent had low innovation capacity and 5.36percent had high innovation capacity. Employing the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to evaluate the impact of farm mechanization on the productivity of rice farming households in Kwara State, Nigeria; the rice farmers that adopted the use of farm mechanization have a higher productivity of 12.68 kg/m2 as against the rice farmers who do not adopt the use of farm mechanization in their farming activities with their own productivity standing at 6.31kg/m2 . This outcome implies that farm mechanization has a positive impact on the productivity of the farmers. It is therefore recommended that quality extension services be put in place in the study area on the benefits of adopting farm mechanization. Also, the government should provide machineries for lease to the rice farmers so as to boost their productivity.