Quantitative assessment of improved rice variety adoption: the farmer's perspective$

Using data collected from 400 farming households in the Casamance area of Senegal, the paper demonstrates that not only farm and farmers' characteristics, but also farmers' perceptions of technology-speci®c characteristics, signi®cantly in ̄uence adoption decisions relating to improved rice varieties. Farmers' perceptions about improved rice varieties were quanti®ed using a quasi-arbitrary ordinal weighting system, based on a methodology ®rst used in industry. The results of Tobit regression analysis including variables representing both farmers' perceptions, as well as farm and farmer characteristics, were found to be important in determining the decision to adopt and the intensity of adoption of the improved rice varieties. We conclude, based on the results in the paper, that it is important for farmers, with the help of on-farm interdisciplinary farming systems teams, to provide an input into the rice breeding program of the Senegal Agricultural Research Institute during the process of rice variety development, rather than only having an opportunity to evaluate the varieties at the end of the research cycle. We believe that quantifying farmers' perceptions in the manner suggested in the paper potentially makes them more palatable to station-based researchers used to cardinal types of analysis. Our ®ndings also provide support for the farmer participatory crop breeding programs that have become popular in recent years in both international and national research systems. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.