Socio-economic profile determining the adoption of innovations among the farmers of Bhagalpur district of Bihar

Abstract

Indian agriculture is highly diverse in nature. It supports a wide diversity of farmers with different social and economic conditions performing agriculture in different ecological niches. They cope up with various stress conditions with their creativity and hard work. In process of dealing with stress they come up with creative solutions and adopt various technologies according to their economic conditions. In present survey 150 farmers were randomly selected and interviewed to determine their adopting behaviour among which, 35 farmers were found to have adopted some new technology or come up with a new solution to existing problem. Socio-economic status of these farmers was determined to study how far these technologies can be replicated in similar socio-economic conditions. From the study it was observed that majority of the innovators (74.29%) belonged to high-income group also the mean land holding of the innovators (6.84) was found to be much higher than non-innovators (3.22). The result was conclusive that the farmers with better socio-economic conditions had higher capacity to take risks, try new technologies in their farms.