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

Abstract

ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (IISWC) and its Research Centres have developed many model watershed projects in India in the past and implemented many soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies for sustainable watershed management. Although many evaluation studies were conducted on these watershed projects in the past, assessment of the post-adoption status of different agronomic 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 and discontinuance of the technologies adopted, diffusion and 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 should be studied in detail, who have adopted different agronomic SWC technologies during implementation of watershed projects. The research study was carried out during 2012-15 as core project at Vasad as lead Centre alongwith ICAR-IISWC headquarter Dehradun, and centres Agra, Bellary, Chandigarh, Datia, Kota and Ooty, with the specific objectives of the study to measure the extent of post-adoption behaviour (continue-adoption, discontinuance, technological gap, and diffusion) of farmers towards adopted agronomic SWC technologies of watershed management. In the present study various indices regarding continue adoption, discontinuance, technological gap and diffusion towards agronomic SWC technologies for watershed management were developed for measurement of post-adoption behaviour of farmers. It was revealed that about sixty percent (58.9%) of agronomic SWC technologies were continued adopted and about forty percent (41.1%) were discontinued by farmers. Out of the total continued adopted agronomic SWC technologies by farmers, little more than forty percent (43.7%) of technologies were continued adopted with technological gap. About one-third (32.2%) of agronomic SWC technologies were also diffused to other farmers' fields in nearby villages from the watersheds developed by the ICARIISWC and its centres.