Study of Farmers Adopting Technological Innovation on Cocoa Farming System: The evidence in Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

Abstract

Cocoa beans have been existed in Indonesia particularly for smallholder farmers as the cash crop of household in the rural area. Today’s its productivity is going down due to the aging cocoa three, pest and diseases. Introducing technology into the farmers group as the alternative way for income diversification based on the cocoa commodity. This study was conducted in East Kolaka District of Southeast Sulawesi Province. Purposive sampling technique was used to select four sub districts of Aere, Ladongi, Lambandia and Tinondo. In each sub district, we chose two sample villages by purposive sampling based on the number of cocoa growers per village and selected 15 farmers respectively based on the random technique due to the homogeneity of the population. In total, we selected eight villages as our sample villages with a total sample size of 120 households. Five components of technology has been introduced, viz. Introducing utilization of cocoa shell for bio-char, utilization of cow dung as organic fertilizer, making cocoa powder for instant beverage, utilization of cocoa shell as the alternative feed cow, and utilization of cow dung as Bio-Gas. This study results show that most farmers have a good and positive response by following or implementing recommended technology. The results of open interviews with farmers at the study site show that the technology introduced is technically feasible based on indicators of easiness of technology application (uncomplicated), easily access to technology, available of supporting materials and inexpensive, easily labor used, and easily in supporting facilities and infrastructure. A good response of farmers indicated that introduced technology has been implemented and adopted by farmers. Moreover, these technology have been implemented which economically feasible, technically easy, culturally done by farmers and environmental friendly.