The nexus between adoption and diffusion of production technologies with yield: Evidence from sweet potato farmers in India

Abstract

Sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas L. (Lam.)] is the seventh most important food crop, following cassava among the root and tuber crops grown in the world (Ray and Ravi, 2005) [18], and is cultivated throughout the tropics, subtropics and warmer temperate regions. It is predominantly cultivated as a rain-fed crop in eastern India, especially in Odisha (40,800 ha and 0.384 million tonnes), Bihar (910 ha and 0.008 million tonnes), Uttar Pradesh (17,180 ha and 0.23 million tonnes), Chhattisgarh (5570 ha and 0.2 million tonnes) and West Bengal (22,700 ha and 0.24 million tonnes) states, accounting for 65% of area (134,880 ha) and production (1.638 million tonnes) (Government of India, 2017) [11]. Area under this crop is declining yearly likely due to the lack of commercial exploitation of the crop [25] and the reduced importance given to this crop in State Departments of Horticulture/Agriculture programmes in many states. Currently, sweet potato in India is grown for consumption as a vegetable only. Although both area (−1.2%) and production (−0.4%) have exhibited a declining trend, the productivity of the crop has exhibited an annual compound growth rate of 0.8% since 1961 (Author calculations). This productivity growth cannot offset the effect of area reduction, resulting in a decline in production. Impact of adopted production technologies could be one of the possible reasons that can be attributed for the productivity growth in sweet potato when its area is showing declining trend. Sustainability in sweet potato productivity growth critically depends on the extent of adoption and diffusion of improved technologies (Baiyegunhi et al. (2019); Cheryll et al. (2018); Khondoker (2018)) [4,6,14]. Adoption of production technologies (high-yield varieties and associated agronomic management practices) is an important avenue for reducing food insecurity in developing countries (Raju et al., 2015) [17].