An Empirical Analysis Of Behavior And Influencing Factors To Farmers' Adoption Of Super Rice Variety In Southwestern Provinces

The research and popularity of the Super Rice in China has presented a favorable trend since the project "China's Super Rice breeding and cultivation system" was launched by the Ministry of Agriculture of China in 1996. Despite enormous advancements obtained, several factors, to different extent, have limited the development of the Super Rice Varieties (SRVs):The SRVs lack eurytopicity to local climate and soil conditions; the cultivating methodology fails to match the improved SRVs; the technology extension toward SRVs is not always available; the cost of labor force raises in the rural areas, and so forth. To improve the extension and adoption of SRVs, and to find out the influencing factors to farmers' adoption of SRVs, this paper do an empirical investigation on the condition of farmers' adoption of SRVs in southwestern provinces.This research is divided into two parts:theoretical analysis and empirical analysis. In the theoretical analysis, this paper firstly reviews the farmers' action theories and the past studies about influencing factors to farmers' adoption of technology; and then, it defines the concepts of Super Rice, agricultural technology innovation, technology diffusion, technology adoption, and so on; at the end, it analyzes influencing factors to farmers' adoption of SRVs in these aspects of natural environment, individual factors of farmers, characteristics of SRVs, the system of technology extension, agricultural policies and also the economic factors and social groups factors.In the empirical analysis, to begin with, based on their adoption to the SRVs, questionnaires were conducted designed especially for the sample blocks of farmers inhabited in four provinces of China:Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi and Guizhou. And then, it analyzes the data from questionnaires by descriptive statistics, in terms of the condition of farmers' adoption to SRVs, householder characteristics, family factors of famers, natural environment, the system of technology extension, agricultural policies. Furthermore, to ensure the influencing factors to farmers' adoption of SRVs in southwestern provinces, this work, which uses the Logistic Model, analyzes the data from the four regions of Southwestern China, and the results indicate that six factors collectively play a positive influence on the SRV adoption of farmers, i.e., the sex of householders, the education level of householders, the expenditure for each family member every day, the proportion of the number of farmers to family members, the extent of loss by natural disasters, and farmers' attitude to agricultural subsidy policies; on the contrary, the distance from the dwelling place of their family to the local fair impacts the farmers as a negative one. Based on the survey and the empirical analysis, it draws the conclusions. At the end of this paper, it puts forward appropriate advice for local and national policymakers, based on the conclusions of the empirical study. The conclusions of this paper are:1. Farmers' cognition of SRVs is limited in southwestern provinces. The technology extension toward SRVs is not always enough, and the popularization to knowledge of SRVs by medias is not available.2. SRVs' technology extension is not enough in southwestern provinces. There is not enough attention to SRVs paid by Seed Companies, agrotechnical stations, Variety Research institutes. Except that, the labor in agrotechnical stations is not enough and the Economical Organizations of Agriculture do not play a role.3. SRVs' production, to a large degree, is restricted by factors of production in southwestern provinces. The area of arable lands in southwestern areas is limited, and the convergence degree of fields is low, and labor supply is not enough. All these things limit the production capacity of rice. The poor family economy and the sharp rising price of agricultural materials strongly limit the enthusiasm of farmers to grow rice and adopt new technologies. And the land policy and subsidy policy have some problems about equity.4. The natural conditions in southwestern provinces provide the chance for development of SRVs. Southwestern areas are resource-poor areas, natural condition is bad, and natural disasters is severe. The ability of disease-resistant, pest-resistant and disaster-resistant of rice is extraordinarily valuable in this event. The extension of SRVs is meaningful in Southwestern areas.