Adoption of biological control methods in crop production by resettled smallholder farmers: Case study of ward 19, Goromonzi District Zimbabwe

Abstract

The biggest problem facing global agriculture will be feeding the 10 billion people who will be on the earth by 2050. Agricultural production should be increased through sustainable solutions to eradicate hunger but protect human and environmental health. The prevalence of synthetic chemical pesticides and their effects has raised concern. The use of biological methods for pest and disease control, currently emphasised is still negligible in resource-constrained settings. The study assesses the adoption of bio-control methods by resettled smallholder horticultural farmers in ward 19, Goromonzi district, Zimbabwe through a cross sectional survey. The adoption of biological control methods by farmers were studied using their knowledge, attitudes and practices by self-administering a closed-ended questionnaire to 30 randomly selected participants. Knowledge, attitudes and practices of participants were scored using Bloom’s cut-off points. Factors influencing adoption of bio-control methods were determined by multinomial logistic regression. Results indicated that farmers had poor knowledge (38%) and practices (30.7%), and negative attitude (58%) regarding bio-control methods. Farmers with knowledge of bio-control were 177 times significantly more likely to adopt bio-control than those without (OR = 177.149, p = 0.002, 95%CI = 6.798; 4 616. 213). There was a decreased likelihood of famers who had used bio-control methods than those who had not to adopt bio-control methods for crop production although not significant (OR = 0.029, p = 0.076, 95% CI = 0.061, 1.439). Key words: bio-control; crop production; Goromonzi; resettled; smallholder farmer