Priority And Influencing Factors Of Farmers’ Demand For Agricultural Science And Technology

Agriculture is the foundation of national economy, today，with the development of economy,the countryside is no longer a simple gathering of primary industry, and has developed adiversified multi-industrial development of the industrial structure. The production and operation offarmers also diversified in structure. There is no longer simple planting, also a lot of aquaculture, asideline. As to the series of changes, the farmers’ behavior also has certain change in science andtechnology demands inevitably. Development of agriculture, a policy to rely on, and rely on scienceand technology, which rely mainly on science and technology, and because the agricultural scienceand technology has some of the public goods nature, so most of agricultural technology is stillmainly provided by government departments. Understanding the needs of farmers for agriculturalscience and technology priority order and influencing factors can help government departments bettertarget to provide the agricultural science and technology most in need for farmers.The purpose of this study is to investigate the agricultural science and technology types thatfarmers need, and to analysis the influence factors that influencing farmers’ demand for technology,so as to provide some theoretical and empirical for formulating policies and programmes related tothe basis. In order to achieve this purpose, the main content of this study includes: analysis of thecurrent situation of farmers’ demand for technology, analysis of all kinds of farmers’ demand priorityfor agricultural technology and analysis of influence factors of farmers’ technology demand, and thenproposing for formulating policies related to agriculture of our country.Datas used in this study is derived from field research of612farmers and agricultural technologypromotion department that distributed in seven provinces of Heilongjiang province, Hubei province,Gansu province, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan province, Fujian province and Shandong province.Sampling in provinces or villages and towns adopts stratified random sampling method. In this studywe use system cluster method to obtain farmers’ demand priority for technology, factor analysismethod to classify factors that influencing farmers’ demand for technology into several major factors,and analyse the influence of these major factors on farmers’ demand for technology. Using generalmultivariate Logit model to analyse and estimate the factors that influencing farmers’ demand fortechnology in this study, the dependent variable is the most needed in a variety of technical servicesthat farmers selected, and the independent variable is the major factors obtained by factor analysismethod.The conclusion of this study is that the agricultural technology information and agriculturalpolicy information are farmers most wanted to obtain. The control of crop diseases and insect pests isfarmers most in need of agricultural technology, the second is the fine varieties technology andepidemic prevention technology on livestock and poultry. Factors that influencing farmers’ demandfor technology are land endowment, farmers and basic characteristics of their families, income level,farmer identity category and concurrent-business degree, and farmers’ knowledge information level.Farmer identity category and concurrent-business degree is the largest influence factor on farmers’ demand for agricultural technology, Gender makes no difference on farmers’ demand for technologyin this study. Knowledge and information plays an important role in improving farmers’ demand fortechnology, other factors also have an impact on farmers’ demand for technology, different technologyhave different influence.Based on the research results, this paper puts forward several policy recommendations:Strengthening the supply of agriculture technology; Increasing promotion and training of agriculturetechnology, improving the promotion system of agriculture technology; Accelerate the developmentof the related system of land market in our country, advancing and optimizing the land circulatingmoderately; Strengthen the development and improvement of the farmers access to agriculturalknowledge and information channels; Encourage and support farmers to develop and join relevantprofessional and technical associations.