Demand-Driven Technologies for Sustainable Maize ... - IITA

348Figure 3: Concentric circles reflecting spatial disposition of farm plots.reduction in the number of crops in an enterprise, occasioned by theadvice of EAs, would impact on the income of the farmers in view ofthe many distortions in the marketing arena in which EAs often lackthe technical skill to assist the farmers (Onyibe and Daudu 2005). Itcan only be hypothesized at this point that the EAs encourage farmersto reduce the number of crops in an enterprise in order to improvethe effectiveness of recommended technological packages adopted bythe farmers. On the other hand, farmers select what to retain based oneconomic considerations. The inclusion of maize in such an instanceindicates a high level of its acceptance and potential at the locations.From the results it is apparent that enterprise combinations involvingonly 2-3 crops indicate advanced stages of adoption of maize by thefarmers in this study.Spatial distribution of maize farmsFive concentric spatial distributions of farm plots were identifi ed (Fig.3), which are refl ections of different adoption stages. The trend in thespread of maize-based farms over time is presented in Table 5.The results indicated that within the fi rst two years of introducingmaize to the communities, most of the maize farms were within thefi rst circle (Homestead circle). The number of maize-based farm plots inouter concentric circles increased progressively to the extent that morefarms were located at the outer circles than at the Homestead circle.