Education and agricultural technology adoption: Evidence from rural India

Abstract

In previous studies, it is clearly explained that agricultural productivity is directly related to the adoption of
technology. The adoption of technologies is in turn influenced by the education of individuals. Thus, this
article aims to analyze education impact on the adoption of new agricultural technologies in rural India.
Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011-2012 (Desai and Vanneman, 2015)
collected from 42,152 households across all states and union territories in India, we estimate these effects
through chi-square test and binary logistics model. The results of the estimates show that when a farmer is
educated, the likelihood of adopting a new farm technology increases by 3.37 %. But the effect of education
is still heterogeneous. Indeed, when the farmer lives in a rural area, the probability of adopting new
technology is 3.30 %. The results also show that if the farmer lives in an urban area, the probability of
adopting new technology is 6.12 %. Finally, other factors are also important and enable farmers to adopt
new technologies. These are farm insurance and access to farm credit, which increase the likelihood of
adopting new agricultural technology by 10 % and 4.83 % respectively.