An Economic Analysis of Modern Rice Production Technology and its Adoption Behaviour in Tamil Nadu

Rice is the staple food in Tamil Nadu and is grown in an area of 2.6 Mha with a production of 8.19 Mt and productivity of 3.2 t/ha. In the context of high water demand by rice farmers, any strategy that would produce higher rice yield with less water is the need of the day. One such system is “System of Rice Intensification” (SRI), which was developed by Fr. Henri de Laulanie in Madagascar in 1980. The general objective of the study is to find the economics and the farmer’s adoption behaviour of the system of rice intensification. The study has revealed that the per hectare cost of cultivation is about 10 per cent lower in SRI than the conventional method. The logit framework has indicated that age, farm size, income of the farm, number of earners in the family and number of contacts with extension agencies are positive and highly influence the adoption behaviour of the farmers. Lack of skilled labour, awareness, training on new technology and experience have been opined as the main problems in adoption of this technology by the farmers. To sum-up, farmers have been vastly benefited by SRI technology and it has helped them in their socio-economic upliftment. The adoption of SRI technique has helped increase the rice production without increasing the area under its cultivation and has proved to serve as an alternative method for rice cultivation.