Post-adoption behaviour of farmers towards soil and water conservation technologies of watershed management in semi-arid regions of Gujarat Bagdi G.L.* ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Regional Research Station, Bikaner-334004, Rajasthan *Corresponding author: E-mail: glbagdi@yahoo.com, Gopal. Bagdi@icar.gov.in (G.L. Bagdi)
Online published on 26 June, 2019. Abstract ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (IISWC), Research Centre (RC), Vasad in Anand district of Gujarat has developed five model watershed projects in the past and implemented number of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies for sustainable watershed management. Though many evaluation studies were conducted in the past but post-adoption status of the SWC technologies over a longer period had not been assessed. It was imperative to appraise the behaviour of the farmers with regard to the continuance or discontinuance of the technologies adopted, diffusion or infusion that took place and technological gaps that occurred in due course of time after completion of the project. Therefore, it was realized that the post-adoption behaviour of beneficiary farmers who adopted different SWC technologies during watershed management projects, should be studied in detail. The research study was initiated in 2012 as research project at ICAR-IISWC, RC, Vasad, district Anand, Gujarat, with the specific objective to measure the extent of post-adoption behaviour of farmers towards adopted SWC technologies of watershed management. In the study, various indices regarding continue adoption, discontinuance, technological gap, diffusion, infusion regarding SWC technologies for watershed management were developed. It was revealed that more than three-fourth (79.7%) of SWC technologies were continued and one-fifth (20.3%) were discontinued by the farmers. Out of the total continued adopted SWC technologies by farmers, one-third (33.7%) of technologies were adopted with technological gap. About fifty percent (48.0%) of SWC technologies were also diffused to other farmers ’fields in nearby villages and on an average 1.3 number of technologies were also infused from outside by farmers ’own efforts in the watersheds. Top Keywords Post-adoption, Soil and water conservation, Watershed management. Top |