The importance of social context influences on new farm technology sustainability: community and sub-community characteristics in Jamaica

The research described in this article examines influences on long-term sustainability (LTS) of new technologies among Jamaican peanut farmers and finds that community context is most important. Several innovations introduced by an extension project were adopted to some extent, and some are still maintained. The research examines the influences on LTS of traditional adoption/diffusion characteristics of farmers, e.g. education, income, and age, and the community context in which farmers operate. To examine LTS—the dependent variables—the study focuses on labor-saving devices, e.g. shellers, sprayers, and strippers, which were introduced to increase productivity and lower labor costs. The study compares the impact of traditional adoption theory variables with community socioeconomic centrality, i.e. the totality of regional political, economic, and social access, as well as local organization membership, and social contact linkages (significant interaction with neighbors). Using regression analysis the results indicate that individual and farm characteristics make no difference, and local interpersonal contact networks make little difference, when local church membership (negatively related to LTS), and a community's socioeconomic centrality within the parish (positively related to LTS) are introduced as variables. Community ‘socioeconomic centrality’, measured by whether a community has access to regional bus service, is the strongest predictor of high levels of long-term sustainable adoption in the surrounding farms. This suggests that the chances of LTS are greatly enhanced if the right communities are chosen and, therefore, advance study of potential target communities seems essential.