Adoption Rate of National Integrated Solutions Package for Rainfed Sorghum among Small-Scale Farmers in Gezira State, Sudan

Abstract

Sorghum is one of the most important crops of Sudan according to its economic and nutritional value. The climate change and use of traditional cultural practices are the major problems of sorghum production in the rainfed sector of Sudan and consequently, the yield of the crop did not exceed two sacs/feddan. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture has designed and financed a special programme for
the traditional rainfed sector of the country called the National Integrated Solutions Package Programme (NISP) as the main adaptation strategy to solve these problems since the 2014 growing season with the objective to diversify and increase production and productivity of crops cultivated in traditional rainfed areas in each State of the country such as sorghum, sesame, millet and sunflower. This study aims to investigate farmers' adoption of the National Integrated Solutions Programme Package for rainfed sorghum farmers in South Gezira Locality, Gezira State, Sudan. A Field survey was used to collect data from 50 rainfed farmers who participated in the programme and an equal number of non-participant farmers from the study area were selected for comparison using the simple random sampling technique. A close-ended questionnaire was constructed and the personal interview technique was used to
administer the questionnaire. The collected data were coded, fed to a computer and statistically analyzed using (SPSS), discussed interpreted using descriptive statistics. The results showed that the participant farmers adopted the programme components. Based on the findings of this study, the NISPP can be considered a very effective agricultural extension policy for the rainfed sector, which will assist rainfed farmers in increasing their income through participation in its various activities. The study recommends that NISPP should become the main national policy specially designed for the agricultural rainfed sector of the country, the needed agricultural inputs should be available at a reasonable price to increase the adoption rate of NISPP, The curriculum of NISPP should be updated and developed regularly to solve the constraints that might emerge and face the programme, in-service training should be organized
regularly to train agricultural extension officers on various aspects related to the rainfed sector, various means for conducting the programme should be available, further agricultural extension research should be conducted.