Sweetpotato technology adoption decisions among farmers in selected municipalities of eastern Visayas [Philippines]
1997
Armenia, P.T.
Results showed that farm households' socioeconomic characteristics including the intitutional and physical factors that confront them vary by levels of adoption with the higher adopters at the more advantaged position. The more prominent characteristics that differentiate adopters from non-adopters were level of education, income from crops, income from off-farm and non-farm sources, topography of farms, and farm accesibility. Adoption of component sweetpotato technologies was still low particularly the use of improved sweetpotato varieties and fertilizer application. Although adopter households earned higher yields and gross margins from adoption of these technologies, mean yields and gross margins were still very low compared to commercial production systems and experimental conditions where optimum application of critical inputs is followed. The major economic factors which significantly influenced sweetpotato technology adoption among farmers were sweetpotato price, cost of planting materials, good eating quality and highly demanded attribute of sweetpotato variety, proportion of sweetpotato production being consumed, and ratio of area devoted to labor time competing crops and area devoted to sweetpotato. The significant influence of other factors on technology adoption such as level of education, farm accessibility, topography of the farm, and participation in training were likewise noted. Technological change on sweetpotato would potentially benefit consumers more but farm households, who are major consumers of the commodity, can absorb part of the consumers' gains. Likewise, analysis of society's potential gains from technological change indicates that the rates of returns from research investments on sweetpotato are highly dependent on the demand and market availability for the commodity
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