Introduction of New Maize technology in Zaire's Kasai Oriental: Application of Risk Analysis in Farming Systems Research

The risks associated with new maize technology and the impact of mandatory cotton production on traditional farmers in Zaire's Kasai Oriental Region were evaluated with stochastic dominance analysis. Net returns for four levels of maize technology were evaluated in canbination with three staple food crops, for four cropping systems with and without mandatory cotton cultivation. Thus, net reblms for 32 separate cropping systems were assessed for the primary and secondary rainy seasons, respectively. The results indicate that cropping systems including new maize technology are fi(St-order stochastic d001.inant in both seasons over cropping systems using local maize. Although the variances for the different cropping systems indicate that using new maize with fertilizer has greater variance than with local maize, the increase in expected net returns for new maize technology appears to compensate farmers for this increased variability. Also, analysis of the mandatory cotton productioo revealed that it is not risk efficient at current price and yield levels. Cropping systems without cotton were first-order stochastic dominant over systems with cotton. As expected, the inclusion of fibre production reduced the coefficient of variation for the more diversified system. Nevertheless, reduction in the coefficient of variation is not sufficient to make cotton production risk efficient.