Adoption Of CA Technology Case Study

Adoption of CA technologies has been defined in several ways depending on the nature of the technology in question. In this study, adoption refers to the decision by a farmer to use a particular CA technology component, a definition similar to that used by Feder et al., 1985. The extent of adoption is measured as the proportion of area the farmer commits to a particular technology. Other Research studies states that the decision to adopt a new or improved technology/practice can be regarded as an investment decision (CASWELL et al., 2001). This decision may involve sizeable fixed costs, while the benefits realized over time. The choice of whether or not to adopt a new technology will, therefore, be based on a careful assessment of a large
The successful implementation of CA in South American countries like Brazil (Dumanski, 2006) and Argentina (Friedrich, 2009) has been the major driver of CA interventions in developing countries. By 2009, farmers practiced CA on more than 106 million hectares (Friedrich et al., 2009) up from 95 million hectares in 2005 (Derpsch, 2005). The performance of CA in Europe, Asia and Africa has been below expectations especially during the 1970s through the 1990s (Cramb et al., 1999; Cramb, 2000). According to Dumanski et al. (2006), 47% of the 95 million hectares of land under CA in 2005 was largely in South America while rest was shared by North America (39%), Australia and Europe (9%) and Asia and Africa
First, Hobbs (2000) argues that overcoming the mind-set of farmers in relation to changing the traditional ways of farming especially in systems where tillage is considered essential and serves various purposes can be a very big task. Second, the time delays in the realization of the full benefits of CA due to problems sometimes encountered during the earlier years can be discouraging to farmers expecting immediate benefits from the new technologies (Hobbs et al., 2007; Hobbs, 2007).Donor fatigue is also manifested where donors financing projects like CA do not understand why full benefits of CA may be delayed, thereby requiring sustained funding during the first 3-5 years (Derpsch, 2005). Haggblade and Tembo (2003) blamed the lack of resources as the main challenge to adoption facing smallholder farmers in Zambia. As a result, most farmers in Mozambique continued with their traditional practices in other parts of the field even after they were introduced to conservation agriculture, which was implemented only on some(Sections of) fields {Nkala and Mango