Abstract
Conservation agriculture (CA) though a good technology capable of protecting the soil resources its rate of adoption by Indian farmers is not so promising. This chapter discusses major reasons behind the low adoption of CA with the help of ‘social learning model’ of diffusion as farmers mostly adopt innovative technologies because of its outcome in prior adopters field rather than the scientific advantage of the technology; and the ‘progressive farmer strategy’ in technology transfer as extension worker-progressive farmer attraction is observed to be another factor that slow down the rate of technology adoption. In fact, demonstrations of CA technologies in different cropping systems of India convey that farmers benefitted economically and ecologically with those technologies. However, knowledge-intensive nature of CA demands strong awareness generation about the technology among the rural farmers of India to fuel up its adoption rate. Moreover, the heterogeneity of farmlands throughout the country demands more farmer field demonstrations of the CA practices to make it need based rather than a ‘one-size-fits-all’ technology.
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Shinogi, K.C. et al. (2021). Socioeconomic Challenges and Prospects in the Adoption of Conservation Agriculture Practices in India. In: Jayaraman, S., Dalal, R.C., Patra, A.K., Chaudhari, S.K. (eds) Conservation Agriculture: A Sustainable Approach for Soil Health and Food Security . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0827-8_29
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