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Abstract
This study examines the role of information constraints in the adoption of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in India by explicitly incorporating information in the adoption model. The results showed that effective information along with other factors such as membership in a farmer organisation, availability of labourers, irrigation facility and so forth were important in determining the SRI adoption. The results also revealed that the Government of India’s National Food Security Mission programme did not have significant impact in promoting greater dissemination and adoption of SRI.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support received from the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India for conducting this study. An early version of the paper was presented at Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Conference in Boston in July–August 2016 and the author is grateful to the comments received from the participants. The author is also grateful to Kanaka Khare for data collection and compilation, Akash Issar and Sonali K. Bhatia for their comments and suggestions. The study has also greatly benefited from the comments and suggestions from faculty colleagues at Center for Management in Agriculture (Indian Institute of Mangement Ahmedabad) namely Vasant. P. Gandhi, Vijay Paul Sharma, Anil Gupta, Sukhpal Singh and Vaibhav Bhamoriya. Additionally, the author would like to gratefully acknowledge the help received from Norman Uphoff of Cornell University on SRI that helped in further enriching the study. I would also like to thank David Roodman for help with the conditional mixed process using Stata. The data used for the analysis will be made available for replication purposes upon request to the author. This paper benefitted from valuable inputs from two anonymous peer reviewers. The usual disclaimers apply.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Supplementary Materials
Supplementary Materials are available for this article which can be accessed via the online version of this journal at https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2017.1336541
Notes
1. The National Food Security Mission (NFSM) was launched in 2007 as a centrally-sponsored scheme to enhance food security through targeted production of rice, wheat, pulses and coarse cereals. Various interventions for commercial crops have also been proposed.
2. The average rainfall in Chikmagalur, Hassan, Orissa and Eastern Madhya Pradesh was 1635, 1113, 541 and 470 mm respectively.
3. Alur, Hassan and Sakleshpur blocks from Hassan; Chikmagalur block from Chikmagalur; Sadar, Patna, and Harichandapur from Keonjhar; Karanjia and Jashipur from Mayurbhanj; Sidhi and Sihawal from Sidhi; and Gohapru and Sohajpur from Shahdol were selected.
4. The model is estimated using CMP command in Stata as it helps us to run multiple simultaneous equations.
5. The depth of adoption of SRI is analysed using total practices as the dependent variable. The SRI emerged as a set of six practices, as already mentioned in the introduction section. They are as follows: 1) transplanting of young seedlings; 2) shallow planting of seedlings; 3) single seedling at wider spacing; 4) weeding by mechanical weeder; 5) use of organics; and 6) efficient water management, alternating between wetting and drying. For the purpose of our analysis, we have decided to split the third practice into two – single seedling and wider spacing. We observed that many farmers, although allowing wider spacing, were planting more than one seedling.
