Agricultural Economics (Amsterdam, Netherlands), The study aims to track adoption of improved chickpea varieties, and assess their on-farm benefits in some remote and backward tribal villages in Gujarat, India, where few newly developed varieties were introduced by a non-government organization. It also determines key factors which were influencing their adoption. The study found that adoption of improved chickpea varieties was gradually increasing by replacing a prominent local variety. Duration of crop maturity, farm size, yield risk, and farmers' experience of growing chickpea crop were significantly influencing their adoption. The on-farm benefits as a result of improved varieties were realized in terms of increased yield levels, higher income and labor productivity, more marketable surplus, price premium and stabilized yields in fluctuating weather. Breeding short duration varieties with stable yield levels under varying weather, and organizing seed multiplication and dissemination in regions, where moisture stress is a problem during maturity of chickpea, are the major suggestions.
Coffin, H. Garth (author), Gunjal, Kissan (author), Kebede, Yohannes (author), and Department of Agricultural Economics, McGill University, Quebec, Canada
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
1990-04
Published:
Netherlands
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 94 Document Number: C07290
Agricultural Economics (Amsterdam, Netherlands), This paper tests for the influence of advertising on the inter-product distribution of consumer demand for non-durable goods and services in the UK, 1963–1996. The long-run demand for seven categories of non-durable products is modelled through an advertising-augmented version of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS), which is incorporated into an error-correction model to allow for short-run dynamic adjustments to long-run equilibrium positions. Model estimates confirm that the restrictions of price homogeneity and symmetry appear to be consistent with the data, yield measures of the various types of demand elasticity that are in general plausible, confirm the strong influence of prices on the allocation of consumer expenditure, but find little evidence to support the hypothesis that advertising has the power to effect marked changes in the inter-product pattern of consumer demand in the UK.
AGRICOLA IND 92018417, The appropriate combination of extension-teaching methods for rapid farm-technology diffusion and sustained productivity growth in the World-Bank-Assisted Agricultural Development Project in rural Nigeria is examined. The multiple extension-teaching methods in the Ilorin and Oyo North Projects have led to self-defeating and counterproductive results. Using principal-components analysis, the ten extension-teaching methods (variables) are transformed into a linear equation by allocating relative weights to each variable. These weights (coefficients of the equation), which are reasonably unique to each variable, measure the relative importance of the variables and therefore facilitate their ranking in each of the project districts. The usefulness of the principal component model in the World-bank-assisted Agricultural Development Projects in particular, and the rural Nigerian agricultural industry in general, are briefly discussed. (original)
