In South Africa, maize is grown all over the country under various environments including both dry and irrigated agriculture. The majority of maize farmers are smallholders farming on small pieces of land with low input technologies. Additionally, South Africa`s smallholder maize farmers are characterised by low maize productivity, this is despite of the availability of many improved maize varieties on the market. It is clear that professional maize breeders are continuously developing many superior maize varieties with traits more suitable for the commercial farming sector than the smallholder sector. Against this background, this study used a descriptive statistics approach to find out maize varieties and traits preferred by smallholder farmers. The study also evaluated factors that influence smallholder farmers` maize varietal selection choice using descriptive statistics and multinomial regression. The data used for the empirical analysis was obtained from a survey of 200 smallholder farmers in Mhlontlo Local Municipality, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufh/vital:28263 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Nkohla, Siviwe |
| Publisher | University of Fort Hare, Faculty of Science & Agriculture |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, Degree |
| Format | 97leaves, pdf |
| Rights | University of Fort Hare |
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