A longitudinal analysis of factors influencing increased technology adoption in Swaziland, 1985-1991

Seldom is technology adoption immediate and complete within the agriculture industry; rather, farmers generally experiment with a new technology on a portion of their land and increase or discontinue its use according to the availability of production resources and the demonstrated efficacy of the innovation. This suggests that technology adoption, rather than being an event, is best seen as a process shaped by a multitude of changing factors and endowments. Insight is offered into this process by determining those socioeconomic factors associated with farm-level changes in the rates of adoption of selected technologies over time. Factors investigated include farm size, farm labor, input and output prices, capital availability, education, risk and uncertainty, and draft animal ownership. The study employs data gathered in 1985, 1988, and 1991 through 3 separate surveys of 85 households to examine maize technology adoption in Swaziland between 1985 and 1991. Of the 8 concepts, all but input prices were found to be significant in at least one of the models.