Adoção de tecnologia no Projeto Regiões Demonstrativas de Extensão Rural - Caicó - RN

Abstract

The objectives of the present study were the following : a) to determine the rate of technology adoption among agricultu ral producers in the region of Caicõ, Rio Grande do Norte, wherein the rural extension service is developing numerous activities, em ploying the region as a deaionstrarion project; b) to analyze the degree of association between 21 independent variables and the de pendent variable, adoption of technology, and c) to determine which variables were the most influential in explaining technological adoption via two separate analytical models. The study área encompasses the municipalities of Caicõ , Ipueiras, Jardim de Piranhas, Jardim do Seridó, Jucurutu, Ouro Branco, São Fernando, São João do Sabugi, Sao Josi do Seridó, Ser ra Negra do Norte and Timbauba dos Batistas in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The region is caracterized as semi-arid, and major economic activities are agriculture and cattle raising,both conducted mainly at the sübsistence levei. The data were collected with the use of a pre-tested quêstionnaire applied by local extension agents to a sample of 110 agricultural producers selected from communities worked by EMATER-RN. In addition, four case studies of the history of technology use and specific socio-economic and biophysical con ditions of the farms in question were conducted by the author in October 1984. The dependent variables were composed of several agri cultural practices from a list of practices recommended by research and extension services for the region. The practices were grouped in terms of high, médium and low technologies according to relative cost and complexity. The independent variables were drawn from two major theoretical paradigms in this research tradition: the sociological - cultural raodel ( diffusionist approach), and the economic-structurai constraints model. Tabular analysis, simple and multiple correlation, and step-wise regression analyses were applied to the data. The findings show that overall 57% of the sample producers adopted one or more of the recommended technologies. As for different technology leveis the adoption rates were 47%, 63% and 62.5% for high, médium and low technologies, respectively. The results seem to indicate that the lower the complexity and the cost of a given technology, the higher the rate of adoption. Among the 21 independent variables, the following showed a positive relartionship at the 10% levei of significance with adoption of the recommended technologies as a whole: mass media exposure, so cial status, edu-cational aspiration, extension agent contact ,cosmopoliteness,and leadership contact (diffusiohist model varia bles); farm size ,• year-f ound access to the riearest town, and participation in à Demonstration Unit, (economic-structural cons traint variables).. .Thè results also showed that tke variability in adoption of low levei technologies can be explained largely through sociological-cultural factors, i.e. .the difusionist conceptionv In contrást, economic-structural constraints seem to have greater explanatpry power as regards the adoption of more complex and high-cost technologies.