Pesticides are a significant component of the modern agricultural technology that has been widely adopted across the globe to control pests, diseases, weeds and other plant pathogens, in an effort to reduce or eliminate yield losses and maintain high product quality. Although pesticides are said to be toxic and exposes farmers to risk due to the hazardous effects of these chemicals, pesticide u...

BACKGROUND Sorghum is one of the main staple crops for the world's poorest and most food insecure people. As Ethiopia is the centre of origin and diversity for sorghum, the crop has been cultivated for thousands of years and hence the heritage of the crop is expected to be rich. Folksong based appraisal of bioecocultural heritage has not been done before. METHODS In order to assess the bioeco...

the purpose of this study is identify the most distinguishing factors of farmers' attitudes and behaviors regarding food security. the research method was survey and correlational research. the population was 25435 farmers of shush, shooshtar and dezful district. 379 farmers were selected based on the table of takman and morgan. finally, 237 questionnaires were collected. data collection w...

Based on China’s organic paddy rice farmers’ data collected from field surveys in Wuchang City, this paper utilises a data envelopment analysis method to estimate the technical efficiency scores of organic paddy rice farmers converting from conventional to organic production. Local organic rice-processing firms provide support to farmers to convert to organic production and, thereby, expand the...

In southern Mali and throughout the semiarid tropics, small-scale family farmers are faced with the challenge of producing adequate harvests in difficult biophysical and socioeconomic environments. Professional plant breeders have had much difficulty developing modern varieties that outperform farmers’ traditional varieties in these environments, in part because of an incomplete understanding o...

Farmers need information at all stages of the farming life cycle to make optimal decisions. The required information includes not only prior knowledge but also real time (dynamic) information such as market prices and current production levels. Some valuable information needed by the farmers is produced by government organizations and is available in different locations in different formats. Al...

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 ordin...

This paper analyzes some important issues surrounding possible deployment of genetically engineered (GE) insect-resistant potato in Peru, based on a large farmer survey held in Peru in 2003. We found that the formal seed system plays a limited role compared with the informal seed system, especially for smallholder farmers. Although 97% of smallholder farmers would buy seed of an insect-resistan...

diversity, accessibility and reliability are the three main factors governing the adoption of information sources by farmers in rural areas. based on the research hypothesis, the existing knowledge and information delivery system in the agricultural sector, functions far below the ever changing nature and tangible needs of existing farming systems. the main objective in this study is to determi...

The purpose of this research was identifying socio-economic characteristics affected on respondents’ participation in contract farming. The survey was conducted using structured questionnaire in populous states namely Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak, Selangor and Johor in Peninsular Malaysia. A total of one-hundred and sixty seven FFV farmers were randomly selected and personally int...