Post-adoption behaviour of farmers towards soil and water conservation technologies of watershed management in India

Abstract

Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (IISWC) and its Research Centres have developed many model watershed projects successfully in India in the past and implemented many Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) technologies for sustainable watershed management. Though many evaluation studies were conducted on these projects in the past but assessment of the post-adoption status of the SWC technologies over a longer period has not been done yet. It was imperative to appraise the behaviour of the farmers with regard to the continuance or discontinuance of the technologies adopted, diffusion or infusion that took place and technological gaps that occurred in due course of time on post watershed programme. Therefore, it was realized that the post-adoption behaviour of beneficiary farmers who have adopted different soil and water conservation technologies for watershed management projects should be studied in detail. The research study was initiated in 2012 as Core project at Vasad as lead Centre along with IISWC headquarter Dehradun, and Centres Agra, Bellary, Chandigarh, Datia, Kota & Ooty, with the specific objectives of the study to measure the extent of post-adoption behaviour (continue-adoption, discontinuance, technological gap, diffusion and infusion) of farmers towards adopted SWC technologies of watershed management. In the present study various indices regarding continue adoption, dis-adoption (discontinuance), technological gap, diffusion, infusion regarding soil and water conservation technologies for watershed management were developed for measurement of post-adoption behaviour of farmers. It was revealed that little less than three-fourth (73.04 %) of SWC technologies were continued adopted and more than one-fourth (27.01%) were discontinued by farmers. Out of the total continue adopted SWC technologies by farmers, little less than one-fifth (18.96 %) of technologies were continued adopted with technological gap. More than one-fourth (27.82%) of SWC technologies were also diffused to other farmers’ fields in nearby villages and on an average 1.23 number of technologies were also infused into the farmers’ fields from outside by their own efforts in the watersheds developed by the IISWC and its Centres.