Household Head-Related Social Capital: The Trump Card for Facilitating Actual Uptake of Innovation in Rural Smallholder Systems

Abstract

As climate projections indicate increased severity on land-based livelihoods, the importance of innovation in building resilience and enhancing productivity cannot be overemphasized. This is even more urgent for the smallholder systems which sustain 90% of Africa’s agriculture and are crucial for enhanced food security as per the Sustainable Development Goals. This study uses the multi-method approach involving 150 farmers to investigate factors affecting uptake of innovation in smallholder systems and the implications on farm output and livestock productivity. Innovation policies will have maximum impact when targeted at the household head instead of a household member. Chi-square results indicate that age, educational levels, household head social capital, and multiple information sources have a significant association with the uptake of innovation. They represent a cocktail of factors that enhance the adoption of innovation in smallholder systems. These factors thus need to be integrated and foregrounded in adoption policies. However, the household head-related social capital is the trump card for innovation uptake as it is the single factor with a significant effect after controlling for other variables in a generalized linear model. Moreover, the lack of financial resources and information are the key challenges to the adoption of innovation among respondents with extensive innovation use. However the innovation use was investigated among crop production systems and may not suggest that in mixed smallholder systems, high innovation in plant cultivation translates into innovation in livestock production. Moreover in the agriculture sector, livestock production is the most vulnerable to climate impacts unlike crop production. There is therefore the need for capacity building in terms of knowledge and managerial and allied skills to help smallholder systems enhance productivity in both crop and animal production.