Small-scale maize farmers in the Colombian Caribbean region:a study of their attributes and agricultural practices

Abstract

Family farming is responsible for most food production in Latin America. However, it is important to note that developed innovations to improve maize, Zea mays L. (Poaceae) productivity are not entirely implemented by small producers. In order to assess the social, economic, and environ-mental attributes of small-sacale maize farmers in the Colombian Caribbean region, a structured survey was conducted on 227 farmers in the depart-ments of Atlantico and Magdalena, which were selected through a stratified sampling method with proportional allocation. The resulting information was subjected to evaluation with Zero-truncated Poisson regression using the statistical software stata®. The results indicated that in the depart-ment of Atlantico, age, education, diffusion index, land ownership, use of machinery and institutional support are statistically significant (p<0.10) and in the department of Magdalena, diffusion index, education, land ownership, associativity, institu-tional support, and water regime are statistically significant (p<0.10) regarding the use of agri-cultural practices. It is concluded that innovation results from a complex process influenced by internal (the innovator himself ) and external (cultural and institutional) factors