Situational Constraints in Technology Transfer
Generating appropriate technologies is not the end towards agricultural progress because farmers cannot be expected to be the beneficiaries of these technologies unless they can derive institutional facilities/ advantage. The situational constraints that prevent an individual to adopt a technology are listed below:
1. Non-transferable technology
(a)inability of the technology generator to perceive farmers problems
(b)characterizing farmers as irrationally traditional, fatalistic, risk aversive, and unwilling
(b)characterizing farmers as irrationally traditional, fatalistic, risk aversive, and unwilling
2. Environmental difference
(a)adverse soil and climatic conditions
(b)deficient in plant nutrients
(c)inability to procure costly inputs
(d)fragmented lands
3. Biological constraints
(a)variety
(b)weeds
(c)diseases
(d)insects
(e)pest resistance
4. Socio-economic constraints
(a)costs and returns
(b)difficulty in getting institutional credit
(c)inputs unavailability
(d)irrigation inadequacy
(e)traditions and attitudes
5. Restricted Institutional Benefit
(a)physical weakness
(b)isolation
(c)landlessness
(d)no representation in local groups and organizations
(e)non-contact of extension agents
6. Sharecropping
(a)landlord’s discourage adoption of technology
(b)no guarantee of getting land next year
(b)no guarantee of getting land next year
The situational constraints have been diagrammatically shown in figure. The figure, demonstrates that situational constraints hinder the transfer agricultural technologies to farmers especially sharecroppers generators and researchers often cannot perceive farmers problems, in respects the adoption of technologies. They commonly characterize the farmers as traditional, fatalistic, risk aversive and unwilling to change. But these are not always true in practice, farmers, are occasionally exposed to inappropriate, technologies. Inappropriateness does not mean that technologies are not good and do receive satisfactory results. Rather, farmer’s personal, economic, soil and farm conditions do not allow them to consider the technologies appropriate for them. Even if the appropriate technologies are transferred to farmers, they cannot take the advantage of different institution credit. For example. Institutional credit, extension agent’s contact, subsidies.
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