Factors Affecting to Farmers Adoption of Rice Production Technology under Good Agricultural Practices System at Champhone District Savannakhet Province, Lao People's Democratic Republic

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to investigate; 1) farmers’ backgrounds on social and economic characteristics, 2) farmers adoption of rice production technology under good agricultural practices system, 3) factors affecting to farmers adoption of rice production technology under good agricultural practices system, 4) problems and suggestions about rice production under good agricultural practices system. The questionnaire was created to collect data from a sample of 267 farmers. The collected data were analyzed for frequency, percentage, mean, arithmetic mean, minimum, maximum, standard deviation and multiple regression.

            The study results showed that the majority of farmers, 64 percent, were male with average age of 51.45 years, married, and graduated primary education or lower. The farmers had an average 6.82 of family members, 3 household workforce, 3.88 rai of agricultural area, 31.83 years of farming experience, and total family income earned 41,396 Baht. The farmers had a high level of knowledge and understanding about rice production under good agricultural practices system. However, the farmers’ adoption the technology, all the average on a low level. The factors effecting to farmer’s adoption on rice production technology were five factors such as education level, contracted with agricultural staff, channel for perceived agricultural information, numbers of information perceived, and knowledge and understanding about rice production under good agricultural practices. The problems of rice production under good agricultural practices was found that the farmers was not adopting of modern technology to rice production, water shortage, soil deterioration, rice yield was affected by natural disasters, breakout of diseases and insects. Therefore, based on this result,. researchers suggested to government agencies should promote and develop rice production by continuously to support new agricultural knowledge and modern technology of rice production, development of water source for rice production; relevant agencies and farmers should be prepared to protecting with natural disasters, provide advice on how to prevent disease and insect pests properly; and promotion of agricultural group forming for rice yield selling.