How Does Information Network Affect Spread of New Crops? A Study on the Spread of Chilli and Wheat Cultivation Among Farmers of Purulia District, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Adoption research for many years has considered individual farmer as the basis of analysis, whereas the effect of networks governing a farmer’s decision-making has received limited attention. Moreover, the spread of technology over different generation of adopters has not been addressed adequately. Hence, farmers’ position within the agricultural information networks and their adoption decision, may be used to formulate some lower order propositions regarding the diffusion of agricultural innovations within networks. The present study was conducted at Purulia District in West Bengal, India, to study the spread of Chilli (Capsicum annum) and Wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivation among the farmers of selected villages. Case study method and focused group discussion were used to track this spread over different generations of adopters. Data collected through structured questionnaire was analysed by sociometric technique and network score of farmers in the agricultural information network was computed. The fractional ranking of network scores of farmers was compared with their relative earliness in the spread of Chilli and Wheat cultivation. It was found that both in the spread of Chilli and Wheat cultivation, most of the farmers who had higher network scores were earlier adopters of Chilli and Wheat cultivation practices but the reverse was not true. This indicated the complex relations between farmers’ adoption-decision regarding new crops and their network positions. Further empirical research will be required to put light on this observation.