Adoption and Economic Assessment of Improved Technologies in ICARDA’s Arabian Peninsula Regional Program

Abstract

The objective of this report is threefold. Firstly, the report is to investigate costs and benefits associated with ICARDA-APRP technologies adopted by Arabian Peninsula (AP) farmers and identify the most effective and economic indicators based on general information and responses of AP countries farmers and the cost benefit analysis framework. Secondly – based on the fact that there is much existing knowledge about the factors that influence adoption of new technologies and practices in agriculture – few attempts have been made to construct predictive quantitative models of adoption for use by those planning agricultural research, development, extension services and policy-making. It is within this framework that the sub-objective purpose is to estimate the expected rate of adoption of these innovations and identify main constraints that limit the adoption process in the AP region through using ADOPT (Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool). The application of ADOPT is the result of the attempt to construct predictive quantitative models of adoption, by providing predictions of the improved AP practice’s likely rate and peak level of adoption, as well as estimating the importance of various factors influencing adoption. ADOPT employs a conceptual framework that incorporates a range of variables, including variables related to economics, risk, environmental outcomes, farmer networks, farm and farmer characteristics and finally, the ease and convenience of the new practice. A focus group discussion (FGD) methodology was used to apply ADOPT to a panel of farmers in each country and for each introduced technology. In the FGD’s we streamlined 22 discussion questions around four categories of influences on adoption: characteristics of the innovation, characteristics of the target population, the relative advantage of using the innovation, and learning of the relative benefit of the change. The third and final objective was to assess the AP researchers and extension agents’ perceptions of technology-specific attributes and characteristics. The omission of researcher and extensionist’s evaluation of technology-specific attributes may bias the results of factors conditioning adoption choices, so a Likert-type scale was used using a sample of seven Research and Extension (R&E) centers in the AP region.