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Factors Influencing Adoption of Pond Fish Farming Innovations in Potsy of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea

Pond fish farming, although introduced in the 1960s, remained undeveloped due to no policy support. In the past decade, it has been revived, due to government support through NFA with collaboration from ACIAR. As part of this program, four innovations were disseminated to farmers to improve their production and income. This study, conducted in Potsy, was aimed at assessing the extent of and the factors that influence the adoption of the innovations disseminated. Pond liming and fertilizing innovation was adopted quickly as it was introduced while feed formulation, stock density , and sampling and sexing innovations were, for majority of farmers (<50%) practiced when needed. Moreover, majority of the farmers (89%) rated problems they faced as high problems. Lack of knowledge and skills was ranked number 1, followed by cost of commercial feed, lack of marketing facilities, lack of local quality feed, misuse of funds and lack of credit facilities. Age was found to be significant but negatively influenced extent of adoption and problem confrontation while farm size was significant and impacted positively on farmer problem confrontation. Although the innovations were disseminated to improve production and income of farmers, their dissemination was not adequately supported through farmer training and extension, market access and credit acquisition.