Vol. 075: Joshi, Ganesh Raj: Variety Attributes, Farmers’ Preferences and Rice Technology Adoption in Nepal

Farmers have numerous concerns and preferences for variety attributes. Their preferences for the attributes result in variety choice decisions since they value varieties by considering the attributes they embed. Ultimately, farmers’ decisions for variety choice will determine the level of crop diversity. Despite farmers having numerous varietal concerns, most of the experimental works in crop improvement evaluate varietal performance often using yield as sole criterion. Understanding farmers’ preferences for variety attributes is important in the implementation of on-farm conservation and variety adoption strategies. To this end, this book aims to analyze the farmers' perceptions on and preferences for rice varietal attributes and their effect on technology adoption in the Terai region of Nepal. The analytical tools include both descriptive and econometric models. The results show that farmers’ preferences are driven by the need for production, tolerance to stress, consumption, marketing and management considerations. There are important variation in the preference for attributes depending upon the economic status of the farmer, geographic locations and his/her farming objective. Also more than 50 percent of the listed attributes were valued as important by the farmers. This suggested that farmers demand varietal diversity, since it is unlikely that a single rice variety will be good at supplying all of the attributes they value. The results show that the farmers’ perceptions of the technology attributes are important variables in addition to the conventional variables in determining the adoption of modern varieties. It is also revealed that the land heterogeneity, risk considerations, market participation, and preference for attributes are important variables contributing to varietal diversity. As the farmers are the eventual consumers of the product of agricultural research such as variety, their knowledge of the production system and preference for varietal attributes would be valuable input for breeding priority setting, on-farm conservation and the adoption of generated technology.

Dear customer! You can use our contact form to order a free pdf version of this title.
Please quote author name and volume number.