Purpose: This study examines the suitability of the system of rice intensification (SRI) for diverse small-scale farmers in Tanzania by exploring if poor and non-poor farmers adopt the system to a similar extent.
Originality: The suitability of low-external input technologies such as SRI for diverse African farmers is a contentious issue. Existing studies suggest that adoption may be skewed away from poorer farmers, but no studies have explicitly categorized farmers who participate in adoption of SRI.
Methods: Farmers exposed to SRI were randomly surveyed. Sample farmers were categorized into three socioeconomic groups – wealthier, middle-wealth, and poorer – using factor and cluster analysis approaches. Wealth category is then used in a logit model to determine probabilities of adopting SRI practices across the different groups.
Findings: The results indicate that middle-wealth group adopt SRI to a greater extent compared to the wealthier and poorer groups. The extent of adoption by wealthier and poorer groups is similar, although constraining circumstances differ. Access to factors that consistently explained adoption: contact with extension services, land with water, and labor, vary systematically among groups.
Theoretical implication: Low adoption is often assumed on reduced exposure to a technology, and non-adopters are expected to eventually adopt. The results suggest, however, that farmers, who have not adopted, may not do so, even after being exposed. SRI as a package does not fit their socioeconomic conditions.
Practical implications: To support adoption across all wealth categories, extension should focus on promoting individual practices rather than the package to enable farmers adopt practices that fit their socioeconomic characteristics. 相似文献
ABSTRACTPurpose: Little is known about effective ways to operationalize agricultural innovation processes. We use the MasAgro program in Mexico (which aims to increase maize and wheat productivity, profitability and sustainability), and the experiences of middle level ‘hub managers’, to understand how innovation processes occur in heterogeneous and changing contexts. Design/methodology/approach: We use a comparative case study analysis involving research tools such as documentary review, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and reflection workshops with key actors. Findings: Our research shows how a program, that initially had a relatively narrow technology focus, evolved towards an innovation system approach. The adaptive management of such a process was in response to context-specific challenges and opportunities. In the heterogeneous context of Mexico this results in diverse ways of operationalization at the hub level, leading to different collaborating partners and technology portfolios. Practical implications: MasAgro experiences merit analysis in the light of national public efforts to transform agricultural advisory services and accommodate pluralistic agricultural extension approaches in Latin America. Such efforts need long-term coherent macro level visions, frameworks and support, while the serendipitous nature of the process requires meso-level implementers to respond and adapt to and move the innovation process forward. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the debate on how to operationalize large programs by showing that the innovation support arrangements enacted in the field should allow for diversity and have a degree of flexibility to accommodate heterogeneous demands from farmers in different contexts as well as continuous changes in the politico- institutional environment. 相似文献
