Achieving national food security and diversifying export earnings from agricultural products is one of the major challenges currently facing developing countries like Ethiopia. Rice is considered as the “Millennium crop” expected to contribute to ensuring food security in the country. Despite the high production potential and the economic importance of the crop, adoption and dissemination of an improved rice variety is constrained by various factors. To this end, this study aimed at identifying determinants of the adoption of an improved rice variety in Chewaka district, Buno Bedele zone of Oromia Region, Ethiopia with the specific objectives of identifying factors affecting adoption and intensity of adoption of an improved rice variety. The study was based on cross sectional data collected from 162 randomly selected rice producing farmers. Descriptive and econometric analyses were used to analyze data. The results show that about 74.96% and 25.31% were adopters and non-adopters of the crop respectively. Double hurdle model results showed that education level and training affected the probability of adoption of an improved rice variety positively and significantly while age affect it negatively and significantly. Sex, farm experience, participation on non-farm activities and credit utilization affected the intensity of the adoption of improved soya bean varieties positively and significantly. This study suggests a high importance of institutional and government support in the areas of education, training, gender disparities in agriculture and credit. Therefore, policy and development interventions should give emphasis to the improvement of such institutional support system and decrease gender disparities in access to such institutions so as to achieve the adoption practice which increases production and productivity of small scale farmers.

Keywords: Adoption, intensity of adoption, Rice, double hurdle