Factors influencing the adoption of improved rubber agroforestry system by Rubber Smallholder Farmers in Indonesia


Factors influencing the adoption of improved rubber agroforestry system by Rubber Smallholder Farmers in Indonesia

wca2014-1788 Dudi Iskandar 1,*Betha Lusiana 2 1World Agroforestry Centre South East Asia, 2World Agroforestry Centre Southeas Asia, Bogor, Indonesia

The use of clonal planting material is important to increase the latex productivity of traditional rubber agroforestry system among smallholder rubber farmers in Indonesia. There are technical, economic and social challenges associated with conversion from traditional to improved system. Clone-based technology that has significant benefits for rubber systems has been widely promoted, but its adoption by farmers has been less than satisfactory. However, the underlying reasons for the limited adoption of improved system by farmers remain unclear. We studied the adoption of technology to improve rubber agroforestry systems in the two main sites for smallholder rubber systems in Indonesia:  Jambi and West Kalimantan.  The new technology includes recommendation to use clone materials while other aspects of rubber management follows the traditional practice. We used logistic regression to analyze the relationship between socio-economic variables (age, education, experience, labour, land size, incentives, income, jobs, farmer group, demonstration plots, training) with farmers’ decision to adopt the new technology.  The results showed the factors of availability of incentives, level of income, availability of demonstration plots, and land size influenced farmers’ decisions to adopt or not adopt the technology. In Jambi the factors of incentives and demonstration plots are significant, meanwhile in West Kalimantan land, incentives and income are significant. Availability of incentives is an important factor and as an indicator of the available economic resources to start clonal rubber in both locations and the willingness to adopt a new technology. The reasons for different factors influenced in adoption include differences in social, cultural and economic factors between these provinces are also highlighted.  The results provide important clues in motivation and limitation in adoption, and the information will be of importance to extension workers, researchers, and policy makers involved in promotion and interventions needed to accelerate the rate of adoption of improved rubber agroforestry system.

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Vigyan Bhavan & Kempinski Ambience

10 - 14 February 2014 Delhi, India

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