Understanding the farmers' behaviour towards water saving irrigation technologies

Publication Type

Contribution to conference

Authors

Zia, S; Wang, X; Spreer, W; Du, W; He, X; Müller, J

Year of publication

2011

Conference name

Tropentag 2011

Conference location

Bonn

Conference date

October 5 - 7, 2011

Keywords

Irrigation schemes

The increase in population has placed a heavy burden on grain production on limited arable land
in China. The water resources in China are unevenly distributed both in time and space (Li et al.,
2005). There are more abundant water resources in the South than in the North. The North China
plain alone produces roughly one quarter of China’s grain (Zhang et al., 1998). The region has
intensive double cropping system i.e. winter wheat and summer maize. About 50 to 75 % of the
total precipitation occurs from July to September, during the maize growing season and only 25-
40% at the time of winter wheat (Li et al., 2005). As a result, agriculture is the main reason for
groundwater depression and has dramatically decreased from 10 meters in 1975 to 35meters in
2000(Changming et al., 2001; Zhang et al., 1998).
There has been extensive research which has focused on the adoption of advance or water saving
technologies by farmers. Skaggs, (2001) examined the adoption of drip irrigation and concluded
that age (negative impact) and farm size (positive impact) are the major factors influencing
Mexican chile pepper producers’ decisions. Further, Larson et al., (2008) evaluated the factors
that influence the adoption of remote sensing for variable-rate application of inputs. They found
out that age, education, farm size, contact with extension service centre and the farmers who
generate their own maps in the field are the factors which govern their decision to use the
technology. Blanke et al., (2007) conducted a survey in northern China to determine the extent to
which water saving technology has been adopted, and the characteristics of the communities that
have been adopting them. They found that the main reason for not adopting the new technologies
is due to lack of incentives to save water. And though the adoption has increased since the water
resource condition deteriorated, but the extent of adoption was still quite low and there is a
considerable room for expansion. There is a lack of sufficient understanding of reasons affecting
farmers’ adoption behaviour. Therefore, the objective of this research is to fill this research gap
and to develop a better understanding and predict farmers’ adoption behaviour. The specific
objective is to determine the socio-economic factors which influence farmers’ adoption decision
in Hebei province, NCP.