Adoption of vetiver extension for highland farmers

Objective of this study is to investigate the adoption behavior and the cultivation of Vetiver of farmers in the highlands by collecting data from the areas under the responsibility of the Hilltribe Development Centers, covering 14 provinces with a sampling of 1,433 farmers. It was found that 401 farmers or 27.98 percent of the sampled farmers had grown Vetiver since 1992, which occupied 35.45 percent of the holding areas of the Vetiver growing farmers. There were 18.70 percent of Vetiver growing farmers planning to grow more Vetiver in 1995. As for the reasons to participate the in Vetiver growing project, 74.81 percent of farmers claimed that the reason was from the introduction of the project officials, while the for conservation purposes, there were 14.96 percent wished to replace other alley crops, 66.58 percent to reduce soil erosion, 47.88 percent to improve soil fertility and 17.95 percent wish to keep using their land forever. Besides, there were 30.17 percent of farmers who joined the Vetiver growing project in order to obtain land ownership or land rights. Studying the use of land between the Vetiver rows revealed that most farmers were using every field every year. For the use of Vetiver, 45.14 percent of Vetiver growing farmers made use of it, commonly used for feeding animals. Besides, the 33.67 percent of growers also introduced Vetiver growing to the other persons, which mostly their neighbors and relatives. In terms of farmers attitudes towards the effect of Vetiver growing, the study showed that both the Vetiver growers and non Vetiver growers had similar opinions of requiring more labour and time for Vetiver management. The analysis of relationship between the adoption of Vetiver and certain socio-economic factors using Chi-square test revealed that the differences of ethnicity, social status, number of family labour and sources of information were significantly correlated with growing Vetiver. It was also found that the farmers who used to grow other alley crops grew higher proportion of Vetiver than the ones who had never grown alley cropping before. Studying the relationship between the information transferred from various sources and the reasons to participate in Vetiver cultivation project showed that the farmers who received the information from the other sources that were not persons or that were not involved with persons had a smaller proportion of land use between the Vetiver row than the ones who received from the person or person-involved sources. It was also found that the farmers who participate in the Vetiver project concerning erosion control had a higher proportion of land use between the Vetiver row, as well as a more expansion than the one who joined the project because of the other reasons.