Variations in the adoption of the high yielding rice variety package among Cavite farmers, Philippines

Abstract

The overall purpose of this study was to contribute to understanding of the differences in the extent and intensity of individual farm use of the HYV package. The study attempted to look into the relative importance of factors as they affected the extent and intensity of individual farm use of the IIYV package. Three methods of analysis were used. Tabular analysis was used to test a few simple relationships. Discriminant and canonical correlation analysis were used to show the different aspects of the structural relationships of endogenous variables to adoption. Multi-stage random sampling was used to select the farmers from two municipalities in the lowland rice growing area of Cavite province, Philippines. The data used was part of data collected to study the 1973-74 wet season inter-farm variation in rice yields. The 1972 wet season crop data was taken from six of the series of personal interviews and field observations collected in connection with the rice yields study. For the test of simple relationships using the contingency analysis, only one hypothesis among the seven relationships tested was found significant. The simple analysis showed that farmers who used straight-row planting did so to make use of rotary tillers. This was explained by the fact that straight-row planting was too labour using and farmers would only do so because it was a must for the use of rotary tillers.In the discriminant analysis, three variables were used to define the "level" of adoption of the HYV package: (1) the percentage of rice land cultivated during the wet season; (2) the number of cultural practices used along with HYV; and (3) the amount of chemical and fertilizer inputs used on cultivated rice land devoted to HYV. Based on these criterion variables, three groups were developed: "full adopter", "partial adopter" and "non-adopter". Four groups of variables were hypothesized to affect the "level" of HYV package adoption: (1) objective utility function; (2) perception of the situation; (3) perceived characteristics of the innovation; and (4) information sources. The objective utility function included the age of the farmer and the highest number of years of formal education in the family. The variables describing the perception of the situation included: (1) percentage shareholding; (2) size of rice farm cultivated; (3) time taken to travel to market centre; (4) distance to walk to road or market if there was no. road; (5) annual income per capita; (6) total gross income; (7) percentage of farmer's share of harvest which was sold; (8) man-land ratio; (9) credit and/or capital availability; (10) farm location controlled by municipality possibly related to the presence of services by a bank and technicians; (11) farm location controlled by district, possibly related to differences in water availability and soils; (12) proportion of neighbours planting HYV; and (13) known difference between the highest and lowest yield of HYV. Lastly, the variables describing information sources included: (1) talking to an agriculturist; and (2) attendance at meetings relevant to agriculture. Show more