Determinants of use of Climate Smart Technology in Agriculture: Evidence from Household data

The objective of this paper is to explore the determinants of the use of climate smart agriculture technology (CSAT) among agrarian households of Odisha, India. The effect of climate change and the consequent unpredictability of weather patterns make agricultural production vulnerable. It calls for a solution wherein it is required to transform the existing agricultural practices to make it more efficient, more productive and less prone to climate change. So, the farm inputs should be more adaptive that can be ushered in by adopting CSAT by the practitioners. It is a smart agriculture process that minimizes the negative effect of climate change on agricultural production and contributes towards sustainable agricultural system. The result of the Fractional and Beta regression reveals that higher the level of social capital, higher is the intensity of the use of CSAT by the households. The use of CSAT is less in households that are female headed and belong to the scheduled tribes in comparison to the households that are male headed and belong to the scheduled castes. However, the households having knowledge about the technology use it more than the households with no knowledge of CSAT. The households who think that CSAT is not women-friendly use the technology more in comparison to households that think that women do not have the skills to use the technology. The intensity of the use of CSAT is higher for households where the female takes agricultural decisions. Further, the use of CSAT is less in families where land is owned by the male members only. This calls for institutional arrangements to ensure wider usage of social capital, land ownership by the female members and their economic empowerment by providing them better wages and livelihood so that agrarian households will be interested to use CSAT in agriculture that can ultimately cater to the growing demand of food.