Impact of Technology Adoption on Agricultural Productivity

This research work examines the impact of technology adoption on agricultural productivity. It considers the south-west region of Bangladesh as the study area. Since most of the farmers in the study area are engaged in rice production, this study surveys randomly selected 60 rice farmers in the IRRI season of year 2015 through using a questionnaire. This study finds sufficient variation in frequency and degree of technology adoption in agricultural practices among the surveyed farmers. The analysis results indicate that farmers are adopting high level of technology in seed variety and irrigation phases, medium level of technology in land preparation, pest management and fertilizer application phases and low level of technology in weeding and harvesting phases. There is a statistically significant difference in productivity between high and low degree technology adopters. Education and land holdings are the statistically significant variables in determining technology adoption level. According to the study findings, a one percent increase in technology adoption leads to increase in productivity by 0.22 percent, holding other factors constant, and this influence is statistically significant at one percent level. Therefore, this study concludes that there is a scope for further increase in productivity through planned manipulation of technology adoption level in different phases of agricultural production.