Abstract
This paper estimates the determinants of farmers’ self-perception toward adoption of new agricultural technologies based on a primary survey of 731 farm households that cultivated rice in eastern Indian states: 157 of these households received seed mini-kits of a new stress-tolerant rice variety called Swarna-Sub1, and the remaining 574 households were randomly selected from the study regions. The results show that farmers who received Swarna-Sub1 have higher scores on self-perception indices toward adoption of new agricultural technologies than the representative farmers. The paper also identifies factors that influence self-perception. The results indicate that female farmers, the less educated farmers, and farmers who belong to the scheduled caste group have low scores on self-perception indices, whereas Swarna-Sub1 users, large landholders, and wealthy farmers have high scores. The results suggest that empowering farmers, in terms of self-perception, may lead to adoption of new technologies.
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Notes
Feder and Savastano (2006) analyzed how opinion leaders’ views on a technology affect adoption of the technology of others.
In Uttar Pradesh state, the surveyed districts include Gorakhpur, Maharajganj, Sidhartnagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Basti, and Mau while Puri and Khurda in Odisha state were covered.
Nand Educational Foundation for Rural Development (NEFORD) in Uttar Pradesh and Association for India’s Development (AID) in Odisha.
Kharif is the main agricultural season in Eastern India.
In general, using Scree Test Criterion enables one to use more factors than using any other criterion.
Similarly, Singh et al. (2012a) also found similar results in the context of micro-insurance in Gujarat State of India. In addition, Munasib and Roy (2012) found that caste affiliation plays an important role in adoption of new technologies. The author concluded that there is a strong and positive association between group adoption and choice of a modern variety by an individual farmer who grow Pearl Millet in Rajasthan in India.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their appreciation to Dr. Anne Marike Lokhorst from Wageningen University for her valuable comments and suggestions on the final draft of this paper. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from the Stress Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) Project, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). We thank the district authorities in the study area and all enumerators who were involved in data collection, analysis and report compilation.
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The authors have not declared any conflict of interest.
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Yamano, T., Rajendran, S. & Malabayabas, M.L. Farmers’ self-perception toward agricultural technology adoption: evidence on adoption of submergence-tolerant rice in Eastern India. J. Soc. Econ. Dev. 17, 260–274 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-015-0008-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-015-0008-1