Factors influencing adoption of major post-harvest handling practices of large cardamom in Nepal

Abstract

The ecological settings in the Himalayan hills provide a unique opportunity to the farmers in Nepal to sell their large cardamom in the global market. However, little efforts are made about the adoption of profitable large cardamom post-harvest upgrading practices in the country. This paper examines and discusses about the adoption of important post-harvest practices of large cardamom in the Eastern Himalayan road corridor of Nepal. Semi-structured interviews with 300 large cardamom-producing farmers as well as focus group discussions were conducted in Taplejung district in 2019. A SUR logit was used to examine the factors influencing the adoption of five major post-harvest practices, such as, improved method of drying, curing, cleaning, tail cutting and grading based on size and color. The findings revealed that about one-third of the respondents had adopted improved method of drying whereas about three-fifth of the respondents (62%) adopted curing. Nearly three-fourth (73.3%) of them had followed the practice of cleaning cardamom. On the other hand only less than 5% of respondents reported that they had been adopting the practice of tail (calyx) cutting. The findings also revealed that the adoption of improved method of large cardamom drying was mostly driven by

Factors influencing adoption of major orchard management practices in mandarin orange of Gorkha: A case from mid-hills of Nepal

“…In this study Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) logit was used to better understand the important factors that affect the adoption decision of major orchard management practices of mandarin orange. The adoption decision is found to be influenced by the set of socio-economical, behavioral, institutional, and technical factors (Carrer et al, 2017;Career et al, 2019;Kattel et al, 2020). The dependent variables on the orchard management practices are binary and take the value Y j = 1 (for the adoption) and Y j = 0 (for otherwise); where (j=1,2......8) are the eight major orchard management practices devised for adoption by Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project (PMAMP), Citrus Zone office located in Gorkha.…”

“…Therefore, the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) logit model was used to identify the factors associated with the adoption of eight major orchard management practices. This was done by using the functional form of the logit model expressed by Gujarati (2009) and Kattel et al (2020).…”

“…Therefore, the expected sign on the coefficient of LSU is positive. Since farmers are motivated to get involved in the production of crops effectively only when they realize optimum return (Abbas et al, 2017), several studies have shown the income from agriculture to be positively associated with technology adoption (Carrer et al, 2017;Career et al, 2019;Kattel et al, 2020). However, the pursuit of involvement in off-farm income-oriented activities often indicates lower farming efficiency (Goodwin and Mishra, 2004).…”

“…Description of variables used in the econometric analysis of the adoption of major orchard management practices of mandarin orange in the study area. Since the installation of this input incurs a cost on part of farmers, only those who have greater income from agriculture could afford it (Carrer et al, 2017;Kattel et al, 2020).…”

A Brief Status of Technology Adoption in Large Cardamom Production at Lamjung, Nepal

“…In the same way, odds adoption of farmyard manure was 1.928 times more by respondents who received training compared to those who haven't received training. Kattel (2020) indicated that training dummy variable has a positive impact on farmers' decision on technology adoption.…”