Adoption and Abandonment of Conservation Technologies in Developing Economies: The Case of South Asia

Alwin Dsouza and Ashok Mishra ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alwin D'souza ()

No 235243, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted as sustainable agricultural system which can increase food production with economic use of resources and negligible impact on the environment. Given the well-established benefits of packaged technologies (defined as a collection of technologies/practices that fall under the three themes of CA), adoption as a package has not picked up in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. Surprisingly, various isolated components of CA technologies, such as zero tillage drill, land laser leveling, direct seeded rice have been popular in this region. However, considering just a single CA technology would be unjustifiable as this would under-estimate the actual complementary nature of various technologies/practices. Under “partial” adoption and abandonment of CA technologies/practices in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, we found that social networks played an influential role both in the adoption and abandonment decisions while involvement of spouses only influenced the adoption of CA technologies/practices. These factors were found to positively influence adoption and negatively influence abandonment of CA. Results also reveal that education, better quality of information, labor constraints increase adoption of CA technologies/practices. Whereas, land constraints, credit constraints and poor quality of information are more likely to push towards abandonment of CA technologies/practices.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235243

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235243

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