Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension

IDENTIFICATION OF CONSTRAINTS IN ADOPTION OF IMPROVED ANIMAL HUSBANDRY PRACTICES

There are wide range of factors influencing adoption and performance of new / existing technologies at the farmers' field. These could be broadly categorized under following heads:

1. Non-transferable component of technology
• Technology can be regarded as a combination of physical capital and technical knowledge/human capital. The simple purchase of physical capital or machine part of the technology is not a technology adoption or transfer. Equally important is to gain knowledge and expertise. And this is considered as non-transferable component of the technology. In animal husbandry, the expertise to identify disease cannot be given until and unless the farmer works and gain experience under the supervision of the scientist. The other reason for yield gap could be use of modern machines and tools in the research stations for accuracy.
2. Environmental factors
• The environmental factors are mainly responsible for region-to region performance of the technology. The factors like heat, cold, frost, soil temperature, rainfall and sunshine play an important role in the growth and yield of the animals as well as fodder crops.
3. Physical and biological constraints
• The physical constraints mean lack of infrastructural facilities etc. On the other hand, biological constraints include attack of micro-organisms and parasitic infestation. All these factors are location specific and affect adversely on the adoption of certain technologies while the technology developed to remove these constraints will be accepted readily.
4. Socio-organization constraints
• It has been observed that the farmers' social status also influence the adoption of technology including both physical and knowledge aspects. These factors could be age, education, infrastructure, and member of local organization, contact with extension agencies, media participation and extension participation.
5. Techno-economic constraints
• These constraints are related with technical facilities and economic power of a farmer. A poor farmer always hesitates to adopt new technology unless no cost is involved. These constraints are size of the farm, farm assets, finance / credit availability, expected yield and expected prices.
6. Farmers’ objective
• A farmer’s objective in adopting a particular technology may not always be profit maximization. He may be interested to minimize losses and risk, save labor and improve quality. A technology giving the highest profit but evolve high risk will not be adopted by the farmer whose objective is to minimize risk.
7. Extension gap
• Extension gap is another constraint in transfer and adoption of technology among farmers. It maybe due to lack of education among farmers or non-adoption of proper extension method like demonstration and farm trials.
8. Technology deficiencies
• Sometimes technologies are developed for the sake of knowledge without giving much consideration to actual problems of the farmers and farmers’ requirements in view. It requires identifying specific factors among above-mentioned broad constraints effecting technology adoption and yield gap through analysis.
• The information on factors are collected and supplemented by on-farm trials and on-farm,on-station research and field surveys. A wide range of techniques has been employed to analyze constraints-such as simple tabular analysis, analysis of variance, whole farm budgeting, multivariate analysis, etc. These techniques are applied either separately or sometimes in combination.