Chapters authored
Socio-Economic Dimensions of Adoption of Conservation Practices: What Is Needed to Be Done?
Promoting sustainable agricultural production requires farmers to adopt new technologies such as organic farming to increase the agricultural productivity, while conserving the environment. Adoption and diffusion of new technologies need a long process, as experienced in the past. There are social and economic factors, identified in the literature, and those could cause delays in farmers’ use of new technologies. Hence, technology adoption and diffusion are important policy issues in agriculture. For that reason, this paper provides a literature review including factors influencing the adoption and diffusion of technology in agriculture and aims to contribute to the future studies and policies, especially focusing on the social capital or the social aspects, which are proven not to be analyzed by the previous studies comprehensively. The results show that interaction with neighbors and relatives, and membership in a group or organization, which represent the social aspects, has a positive influence on adoption and diffusion of new technologies. Hence, policy-makers should incorporate the social aspects when designing the policies, such as cost sharing programmes, to promote adoption and diffusion of new technologies.
Part of the book: Organic Agriculture