Agro-Economic Factors Determining on Adoption of Rice-Fish Farming: An Application for Artificial Neural Networks

This study was carried out to identify agroeconomic factors on adoption integrated rice-fish farming by farmers. A survey was conducted using a stratified random sampling to collect data from farmers of selected villages in Guilan province, north of Iran. The questionnaire validity and reliability ware also determined to enhance the dependability of the result. Data were collected from 184 respondents (61 adopters and 123 non-adopters) randomly sampled from selected villages and was analyzed using the Artificial Neural Networks. Results for agronomic independent variables showed correctly that 78.2% were classified from training samples and 71.7% from testing samples. In addition, results for economic independent variables showed correctly that 72.7% were classified from training samples and 71.2% from testing samples. On this basis, agro-economic factors influencing the adoption of integrated rice-fish farming were application of chemical fertilizers, application of herbicides, especially quantity using Diazinon, yearly income from agricultural activities, number animals and accessibility to agricultural organs. 