Farmers’ Network Analysis on Diffusion and Adoption of CAU-R1 Variety in Imphal East District of Manipur

Abstract

Food security with increased and sustained production of the major cereal crops in India is the need of the hour. The role of farmers as informal extension agents has been depicted in many recent studies emphasising the need for studies on network linkages between the farmer communities and the stakeholders in dissemination and adoption of improved technologies. The present study has been conducted to understand the role of social networks in the diffusion of CAU-R1 variety among the farmers of Manipur. The research design employed was exploratory and the sampling procedure was mixed sampling with purposive sampling for the selection of the state, district and key farmers. Snowball sampling was used to identify other farmers in the network. The sample size was 64 farmers from eight villages in Imphal East district. The socio-economic profile of the farmers showed that majority belonged to medium age between 36 years to 50 years, medium level of innovativeness, social participation, cosmopoliteness and risk bearing ability. The Social Network Analysis measures employed for the study were the centrality measures that include the degree, closeness and betweenness centrality to identify the most central, influential and powerful actors in the network. The average in-degree and out-degree was found to be equal for all the villages with a maximum degree centrality of 16. The betweenness centralization index of the networks was very low (24.55%) indicating very slow rate of spread of information and information sharing restricted only between few actors in the network. Social participation and trainings were positively correlated while the farming experience and time taken for adoption were negatively correlated with the network measures. The outcomes revealed that there is need for a more concerted effort by the farmers and stakeholders to sensitize farmers about the variety through exposure visits, trainings, incentives and timely input supply.