Communication and socio-personal factors influencing adoption of dairy farming technologies amongst livestock farmers in Iran

Abstract

East Azerbaijan of Iran was purposively selected as a specific area for this study. There are a great scope and potential for enhancing livestock production and productivity in the state. Research provides technologies to help in achieving production and productivity increases but technologies need to be transferred to farmers to ensure its impact. To study adoption level of dairy farming technologies and factors associated with adoption of dairy farming technologies among livestock owners a sample of 154 farmers from a total of eight villages, four villages from higher plain areas and four villages from lower plain areas, by the use of “stratified two-stage random sampling” method were selected. Data were gathered with the use of structured interview schedule. The criteria like frequencies, percentage, mean and product moment correlation were calculated. Also t-test and multiple regression analysis were used to analysis the data. Based on the results, it can be concluded that 59.09% of livestock farmers of the two groups were found belonging to medium level of adoption behavior, followed by 22.75 and 18.18 percent livestock farmers with high and low level of adoption behavior with respect to dairy farming technologies. Information input, information output, farmer intra-system communication, farmer-researcher communication, farmer-extensionist communication, availability of input facilities and overall knowledge level about dairy farming technologies had positive and highly significant relationship (p<0.01) with overall adoption of livestock farmers to dairy farming technologies.

Keywords: livestock owner, adoption behavior, dairy farming technologies, adoption, communication.

African Journal of Livestock Extension Vol. 4 2005: pp. 1-8