Social impact of technical innovations: study of organic cotton and low cost drip irrigation in the agrarian economy of West Nirmar Region.

Abstract

The Socio-Economic Photo (SEP) conceived in the Maikaal Research Project aimed at understanding the profile of adopters; adoption impacts; and the processes underlying the decision making of the farmers in the Maikaal region with respect to organic farming and micro irrigation technologies.SEP forms a part of the larger research project titled 'Growing Organic Cotton under Groundwater Stress' which also includes Agronomic Data Monitoring (ADM), Adoption and Dissemination Analysis (ADA) and other studies 1 .Towards this end, a large sample survey of 400 farmers was administered, besides measurements on farmer fields and trials on the bioRe research plot which largely aimed at comparing the results of different cropping systems.Further, several other studies also contributed towards enhancing our understanding of the socio-economic system in the study region and the process of farmers' decision making.These included, among others: [1] A detailed study on the spread, adoption and impact of Pepsee systems (Verma, Tsephal and Jose 2004); and [2] Two IRMA MTS studies on technology adoption and transfer dynamics of micro-irrigation in Maikaal, Saurashtra and Jalgaon (Singh and Jain 2003; Kumar and Sinha 2003).This report, therefore, presents a synthesis of several studies undertaken by IWMI broadly under the themes of Maikaal Research Project and Promoting Micro-irrigation in India. Scope and Mandate of the SEP in the Maikaal Research Project 2While ADM seeks to deliver results on a system comparison between choices of different agricultural practices and their combinations; the SEP seeks to concentrate on the process part and tries to capture the significant variables in the decision making process that leads to selecting choices from available alternatives.Also, while the ADM provides in-depth and detailed results on the costs and benefits of the farming alternatives available for a smaller sample (100 farmers), the socioeconomic photo would cover the breadth of the population by covering a much larger sample size (400 farmers).The also tries to capture the relevant developments over time in order to enrich and get a better understanding of the decision making process.The SEP was therefore undertaken with the following main aims: 1.To compare Organic adopting with non-adopting households and drip / Pepsee adopting and non-adopting households on following parameters:A. Farming Household Characteristic 3 B. Material inputs and outputs C. Monetary flow 1 See Eyhorn et al. (2002) for the Detailed Research Concept 2 Adapted from Eyhorn et al. (2002) 3The farming household characteristic will also aim to look at and analyze softer variables of socio-economics, space and inter-linkages within community.