Study On The Behavior Of Farmers' Adoption Of Agricultural Technology In Traditional Agricultural Areas Northwest

The agricultural techniques are the general reflection about the laws of development and the application achievement of agricultural production. Currently, our countries'agricultural technology development is in the coexistence of traditional techniques and modern technology which is called "dual technology" stage of development. In this condition, the contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress (48%) is far below the level of developed countries (60-80%). It is becomes the main obstacle restricting the optimization of agricultural structure, the improvement of agricultural productivity and the increasing of international competitiveness of agricultural products in our country. Especially in the western tradition agricultural region, many adverse factors such as the harsh natural conditions of agriculture, low labor force quality, small coverage of new technology made the agricultural economy has being at the low level for a long term, it is mostly requires to make use of advanced agricultural technology to transforming the traditional agriculture. In fact, our country, every year, only has 30% approximately in 6000-7000 agricultures technology innovation being changed. The reason about a large number of agricultural science and technology innovation is laid aside and neglected is that the long-standing top-down agricultural extension approach led the needs of farmers and the supply information of extension workers has a gap, which cause the effective demand for agricultural technology conflict with the effective supply. Therefore, the study of technological innovation, spreading and adopting form the perspective of farmer's requirement has been accepting a widely attention around the world recently. This paper based on the investigation data in Shaanxi Gansu and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, under the guidance of theory such as economic geography, agricultural economics, study of farmer behavior, using of various methods, analyzed several question about the farmer's technology adoption. Those questions mainly include the farmer's technical efficiency of production, the will of farmer's technology needs, the factors which affect the motivation and behavior of farmer's technology adoption, the difference in farmer's adoption of agricultural technology with variant attributes, the technology environment's impact on the farmer's adoption of new technology, the relationship between the main technology supplier with the farmers and the spatial characteristics of farmer adopting technology. At last, this research tries to reveal the characteristics and differences in technology adoption behavior of farmers in Northwest area, and provide evidence to help the technology supplier better understanding the need of farmers as well as making appropriate technology promotion strategies. It also can give same advice for building a scientific system of regional agricultural technical service.The main conclusions are as follows:1. The low level of agricultural technology is an important factor restricting agricultural development in Northwest area. The scarcity of arable land becomes the major factor affect a farmer to improve the technology efficiency. As a result, Farmers often replaces the limited arable land by increasing the input of labor and capital, then it cause the phenomenon of diminishing marginal rate of substitution. For the technology with public properties or higher input costs (cognitive costs, learning costs, using cost), such as the Water-saving irrigation technology, farmers often need more time in consideration, understanding and observing, thus, it can be shown by the elements configured deficiency, the low technical efficiency and many other appearances.2. Farmers'will of requiring new technologies is very strong. Meanwhile, farmers' awareness of new technologies is not only induced by the resources endowment, but also affected by the market demand and risks. In General, we found that the input costs, the level of domestic economic and technical risks are factors what farmers take into account the most before adopting a technology, while the technical effects, the price and sales prospects are factors about what farmers are most concerned after adopting a technology. Furthermore, Farmers who grow different crops and using different technologies are affected by different factors in decision-making. Farmers usually have the "rational" characteristic in new technique cognition and decision process.3. The farmers'technology adoption behavior is affected comprehensively by their own characteristics, family economic characteristics, technology attributes and technical environment. These factors may promote or hinder farmers'decision-making process. It can be specificly performed by that:(1) the farmers'technology adoption behavior is remarkable affected by the head of household age, the head of household's educational level, the concurrently industry degree, the family income level, the arable land scale and labor force quantity. The technology adoption rates and impact factors display the linearity relationship or "U" type relationship. (2) The differences in technical attributes can influence the adoption behavior of farmers, which can be showed out by the technology adoption rates and the farmer's characteristic who adopt the new technology. At the same time, the technology adoption rate is also different in the change trend and degree affected by different factors. (3) The technology environmental factors have great influence on farmers to adopt new technology, and the soft environment's impact is greater than the hard environment. Meanwhile, there is a big difference between the behaviors in farmer's adoption of new agricultural technologies with different attributes.4. The main agriculture technology suppliers in northwest area are the government departments, enterprises, "R&D" institution and farmers cooperatives organization. Specifically, Agricultural technical service station dominate the impact of farmers understanding technical information, accessing to technology, training and other aspects, while the "R&D" institution, enterprise as well as farmers cooperatives organization are play an assisting role in meeting the technology needs of farmers. During the investigation, the farmers pointed out that the suppliers have many problems including:(1) the Agricultural technical services departments staff is not enough, the level of technology is low, the technology transfer way is simple, the technology propagation channel is not smooth and the administration forces is too strong. (2) Business services have the problems like high default risk, high production costs and the agreements between farmers and enterprises are imperfect. (3) The "R&D" institution's technical service meet the problems, such as service times is little, the technology is too hard to understanding, lacking of communication mechanisms and so on. (4) The farmers cooperatives organization's problem include that the organize level is low, the management is poor, the running costs are high, the technology service is simple and the market connect is not closely linked.5. The spatial distribution of agricultural technology diffusion certainly has law to follow, the tangible and intangible agriculture technology's extending process all exist "Neighbourhood Effect" and "Scale Hierarchy Effect ". Generally speaking, the distance is more far away, the effect that the technology diffuses is smaller, the scale of agriculture production is bigger, the effect that the technology diffuses is bigger, technical level is more lower, the farmer's new technology adopting enthusiasm is higher. While from the point of technology with different attributes, the technology which is easier to grasp and has an obvious effect is vulnerable to the impact of distance and size. Competed with the tangible agricultural technologies, the dissemination of agricultural knowledge is more vulnerable to these two factors.