Impact of social factors in adoption of CSR BIO - A cost effective, eco-friendly bio-growth enhancer for sustainable crop production

Abstract

Comparative evaluation and survey on adoption and profitability of existing crop production system evidences problems of higher input cost, low productivity, diminishing profitability and lower cost:benefit ratio in the field conditions than expected. To overcome these problems, a cost effective bio-formulation CSR BIO was developed using dynamic microbial consortia cultured in patented dynamic nutrient media under the World Bank funded National Agricultural Innovation Project. The bio-formulation intervened in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh played an unique role in increasing income and productivity among adopters. Most of the technologies fail due to improper diffusion process and lack of adoption study to assess their performance. Therefore, the current study looked into the adoption profile of the CSR BIO, a bio growth enhancer, and assesses the relation with critical factors influencing adoption intensity using logistic regression model through survey data obtained from 2010 to 2013. Results showed an overall average adoption percentage of 68.61 % over the study period. The adoption percentage increased with the year of intervention which signified the success of the technology and got stabilized at 83.00 % in the year 2013. The major factors which have strongly influenced the adoption process were the level of training, land holding capacity and occupation of the target users. Small land holders with agriculture as major occupation who had received trainings, adopted more intensively than the others. The results of this study furthermore indicated that advancing the knowledge diffusion process of the cost effective technology would be useful in developing extension strategies for novel low cost technologies.