Comparative Socio-economic Analysis of Resource Conservation Technology (RCT) Adopters and Non-adopters in Wheat Cultivation in Eastern U.P. India

Abstract

Increasing water shortages is a global issue environmental impact from all uses of water, particularly irrigated agriculture urgently need special attention and stagnation in yield growth may be the result of the degradation of resource base, cause by mining of soil nutrients, declining organic matter levels, increasing salinity, depleting underground water table, and the buildup of weeds, pathogens and pest population. All these necessitated to think over sustainability of resources and conservation. The resource conserving technologies (RCTs) are in an emerging state all over the world. To increase the adoption of conservation tillage practices a number of policies may be used including average size of family, education, holding size, and irrigation facilities. The study was conducted in Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh in the year 2012. Mirzapur district consists of 12 blocks. In four blocks RCTs were extensively adopted by the farmers, out of which, Jamalpur and Naryanpur block was randomly selected. Eight villages were selected from these blocks for the purpose of the study. A total 160 farmers (RCTs adopters 80 and non-adopters 80) were selected. The major findings of the study were input use pattern of zero tillage and conventional tillage shows that zero tillage used fewer amounts (but some inputs like seed, irrigation used the costly) of many inputs in comparison to that of conventional tillage. The wheat grain yield obtained by adopters was higher. Majority of the respondents (90%) had expressed that non-availability of RCT machine on time, lack of irrigation water, non-availability of fertilizers at appropriate time, weed problems and fragmented land recognised as major constraints in adoption of RCTs at large scale.