People who studied and specialized in agriculture might be aware of the terminology and studied it as part of “Agriculture Extension”. Transfer of technology (TOT) or technology transfer (TT) is an umbrella term that is a process of transferring technology/invention from the person or organization who are its stakeholders to another person or organization who wants to use that particular technology. It is an integral part of agriculture extension involving the transfer and spread of technical innovation and know-how to the farming population. Sounds so simple right? I wish it would have been.
Technology Development for Agriculture
According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the future production of food for 10 billion people by 2050 will be contributed by 10% by the expansion of land, 20% by the intensification of agriculture production, and 70% by the application of technology. Given their ability to feed and provide employment for a population that is continuously growing, agricultural technologies are of utmost importance and are rightfully employed as the primary tool to increase farmers’ revenue.
The first step to technology development is Need Analysis.
This is the first step which is done by studying the market and doing deep situational analysis to identify the needs in particular. Based on all these analyses one gets to know about the problems which are being faced by the farmers and how to overcome them. E.g. Fasal saw how farmers are still doing guesswork in farming and using resources in a very injudicious manner. Excess use of resources like water, and pesticides, leads to an increase in the cost of production, compromises the quality of the product, and impacts soil health. Therefore, after doing extensive research, Fasal developed an IoT-based AI-powered intelligence platform that delivers farm-specific, crop-specific & crop-stage specific actionable advisory to the farmers.
TOT Dissemination & Adoption Process
TOT is a very cumbersome process that includes many stages and various phases and calls for a well-thought-out plan, ideas that are easily understood by others, and a variety of formal and informal forms of collaboration between technology developers and recipients. Any new technology must be able to benefit society economically at all levels while retaining environmental friendliness, system self-sustainability, and social and cultural compatibility in order to be accepted. Each university scientist across all faculties, research stations, centers, institutes, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), etc., consistently uses every communication channel, method, and opportunity available to them for technology transfer through the appropriate medium and at the proper timing commensurate with each technology.
Technology development and transfer being dynamic processes, there is not one standard process for TOT. To read more about the TOT process in Fasal, you can refer to our previously published article on the same topic.
Challenges with TOT in the case of Indian farmers
- Majority of farmers are accustomed to their year-old farming practices.
- Lack of awareness regarding new technology due to an inadequate level of education.
- Not capable of investing much in new things.
- Sometimes transfer agents who are part of TOT are not able to deliver in a manner farmer wants.
- Only a few farmers are Early Adopters while the majority of them fall in the category of Late Majority & Laggards (see details below).
Technology Adoption Curve
This was given by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal, and Everett M. It helps us to understand how different people react in a different manner when it comes to adopting and accepting new innovative products & technology.
The image below shows the “Internet of things” technology adoption in the agricultural sector in India in 2020
You can see that technology adoption is the least when it comes to pre-harvest, the reason being that this is fully driven by core farming community.
Fasal and TOT
We at Fasal are in this process of Technology Transfer from 2018 and as already mentioned above this is not an easy task. There are certain processes already streamlined which we need to follow to make farmer adoptive towards our Intelligence System. For smooth Transfer of Technology, we have categorized our farmers into three major categories:
1. Innovators & Early Adopters
These are the people who actually believe in a change. They tend to create opinions, which propel trends. In the first meeting they try to gain as much as they can regarding any technology. They are futuristic. They generally take 1–45 days to adopt any new technology.
2. Early Majority
The willingness of this category for new products is a little low compared with Innovators and Early Adopters. They need timely follow ups. They generally take 45–90 days for adopting any new technology.
3. Late Majority & Laggards
These are from the skeptical group. They adopt any technology only after it is adopted by average members of the social system. They tend to be more cautious about results of that particular technology. Generally they are traditionalists and are the last to adopt an innovation. They take more than 90 days for technology adoption.
To tackle every above category, members of TOT should have different strategies. Category 1 is hyperactive. Most times they are already aware about product and also about its application. But unfortunately share of Category 1 is lowest amongst the all. The real role of TOT comes when they deal with Category 2 & Category 3. They need to be nurtured timely. Meetings and follow-ups are a must for them. One needs to be more empathetic while dealing with them. Giving them an opportunity to talk to people who are already using such technology helps a lot. One not need to be assumptive while dealing with them, as they might show interest in product but still adopting it will take time for them.
Making farming data driven and then making farmers adopt such technology is a revolution in itself of which all FASAL members are proud to be part.
