EXPLORING KEY COMPETENCIES DRIVING FARMERS’ INNOVATIVENESS: AN ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCEDURE APPROACH

Agriculture faces a range of complex and interconnected challenges that impact its sustainability, productivity, and resilience. Farmers, often working on the frontlines of these challenges, are uniquely positioned to develop and implement innovative solutions tailored to their specific environments and needs. These innovations range from advanced crop management techniques and sustainable pest control methods to cutting-edge technology for precision farming and resource conservation. Farmers’ innovativeness refers to their ability to generate, adapt, and implement new ideas, methods, and technologies in agriculture. It is important to know the factors determining farmers innovativeness to nurture it and to provide a congenial atmosphere to innovate further. This paper focussed on studying farmers innovativeness by using expostfacto research design with a sample of 30 experts. Of the five dimensions, Conceptual competencies were ranked first (0.32), followed by Learning competencies (0.29) and Strategic competencies (0.26). Major indicators across the dimensions were proactiveness (0.115), inquisitiveness (0.106), persuasive ability (0.103), profit orientation (0.100) and social networking (0.064). To validate the judgments given by the experts, inconsistency ratio was also calculated for all the indicators, and it was below 10% indicating the consistent judgements. Hence, these indicators may be employed to nurtured farmers innovativeness.