Adoption intention of farmers towards improved tools in paddy cultivation practices

A sizeable portion of farmers in India are dependent on agriculture. Farm land in India is more of fragmented which means small and marginal. As the land holdings are small, farmers are doing the farming practices manually with lot of risk and drudgery. Farmers are not in a position to afford the mechanised equipment rather they can use the improved tools available for the same. Current study was conducted on paddy cultivation practices in Andhra Pradesh. Two districts were selected namely east and west Godavari in which two blocks were taken from each district. From each block 30 samples were taken randomly so that total sample size was constituted to 120. Adoption intention was assessed against five improved farm tools available for paddy cultivation practices. A five-point scale was used to know the degree of very interested to not at all interested. Mean scores were assigned appropriately. Mann Whitney U test was applied to know the significance of the adoption intention. Results showed that Drum seeder have the highest mean score followed by cono weeder, SRI planter, power prayer and power operated thresher. Mann Whitney U test results showed that all the five improved tools found to be significant for the adoption intention. The present study may help the farming community to adopt the improved tools which are easily available, affordable for them.