Conservation Agriculture Technology: Extent of Adoption & Constraints Faced by Farmers of Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract

Increase in human population and vigorously changing climate leading to declining natural resource are the emerging challenges for the world's agricultural systems, which need to produce more food for the increasing population. Therefore, change in our conventional agriculture practice is required by adapting practices or technology helping in coping up with the changing climate and sustainably using the resources for future productivity gains and Conservation Agriculture (CA) Technology is one of the best alternative. CA is a resource conservation practice which improves biodiversity and natural biological processes above and below the ground surface and includes a trifecta of no-till or minimum-till or zero-till farming, permanent soil cover and crop rotations which have existed for nearly a century, but its uptake has generally been slow and uneven. Present study was conducted at state Madhya Pradesh of India using ex-post facto research design to find out the extent of adoption along with the constraints faced by the farmer in adoption of this decade older technology. The study revealed that despite the proven benefits of CA, its adoption rate is very slow in the region. Further, majority of the farmers had moderate knowledge of CA but were afraid to adopt it completely. The major reason witnessed were complexity of CA in comparison to conventional agriculture, lack of awareness of this technology among farmers and high cost and unavailability of happy seeder.