A Comparative Assessment of Adoption Behaviour of Tribal and Non-tribal Rice growers in Assam

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the principal diet of majority of the population. A large portion of rural community of Assam depends on rice farming for their livelihood. Baksa district of Assam has enormous potentiality in rice production. Although the district is being blessed with favourable agro climatic conditions, yet the advantages could not be harnessed in terms of yield. To meet the growing demands of rice, one best possible route is to adopt improved technology in HYV rice. As a good number of tribal farmers are prevalent in the district, therefore the study attempts to explore the adoption behaviour of tribal and nontribal rice farmers along with the associated factors in the adoption process. A total of 160 respondents (104 non-tribal and 56 tribal farmers) were selected as the fi nal sample by proportionate random sampling method. The fi ndings showed that above seventy percent of farmers had overall medium adoption level. However, a total of (73.13%) of non- tribal and only 51.78 per cent tribal farmers exhibited medium level of adoption. The “t value” was found to be non-signifi cant. Overall age, family size, operational land holding. training exposure, social participation, economic motivation and scientifi c orientation of the farmers had a positive and signifi cant association with the extent of adoption in case of HYVs. Further, these signifi cant and nearly signifi cant variables were taken for Tobit analysis to see the infl uence of these factors on extent of adoption of HYVs, where only training exposure showed a positive and signifi cant contribution towards adoption of HYVs.