The Importance Of Agricultural Technology

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Agricultural technologies play a vital role in economic development process of a given countries via enhancing the agricultural productivity. Technology is defined as a new, scientifically derived, often complex input supplied to farmers by organizations with deep technical expertise. In other word technology is defined as any idea, object or practice that is perceived as new by the member of social systems (Mahajan and Peterson, 1985). The concept of technology could be conceptualized better through understanding the difference between technology adoption and diffusion. Technology adoption is measured at one point in time while technology diffusion is the spread of a new technology across population overtime. Rogers (1983) argues that, innovation …show more content…

Technology diffusion process signifies a group of phenomena, which suggests how an innovation spreads among consumers. It takes place at the individual level and is the mental process that starts when an individual first hears about an innovation and ends to its final adoption or rejection. Roger (1983) summarized the above definition by the following four core elements: (1) the technology that represent the new idea, practice, or object being diffused, (2) communication channels which represent the way information about the new technology flows from change agents’ suppliers (extension, technology suppliers) to final users or farmer. (3) The time period over which a social system adopts a technology and (4) the social system. Overall, the technology diffusion process essentially encompasses the adoption process of several individuals or farmers over time. On the other hand, technology adoption is the use or non-use of a new technology by an individual or farmer at a given period of …show more content…

(1985), adoption can be categorized into individual or aggregate adoption. He defined individual adoption as the degree of use of a new technology in a long-run equilibrium when the farmer has full information about the new technology and it is potential whereas, aggregate adoption defined as the process of spread of a technology within a region. Further, their studies distinguished technologies that are divisible and not divisible. Divisible technology in terms of resource allocation requires the decision process involves area allocations as well as levels of use of rate of application. For instance: improved seed, chemical fertilizer, and herbicide and pesticide. Whereas, technologies that are not divisible in term of resource allocation require how much resource to be allocated to the new and old technologies. For instance: mechanization and irrigation. On the other hand, the intensity of adoption of divisible technologies can be measured at individual or aggregate level in a given period of time by the share of farm area under the new technology or quantity of input used per hectare in relation to the aggregate level of adoption in a region while, the extent of adoption of non-divisible agricultural technologies such as tractors and combine harvesters at the farm level at a given period of time is dichotomous (use or no use), and the aggregate measure becomes

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