Constraints in Adoption of Drip Irrigation

The study was conducted to find the constraints in adoption of drip irrigation for the farmers of Junagadh Taluka of Gujarat State. The Socio-Personal profile of farmers and their response towards eighteen (18) possible identified constraints in adoption of drip irrigation was evaluated. The response of farmers was converted in quantitative form by assigning score to each constraint based on farmers response as a constraint is very important, important, less important or not important ranking was given to each constraint based on total score.. The results showed that 84% of farmers had education level of secondary school or less, 36% of farmers were depending on farming alone as their source of livelihood and 84% farmers having land less that 4 ha. As per the perception of the farmers, high initial investment ranked the most important constraint in adoption of drip irrigation system by the farmers with score of 146. Other important reason for non adoption were more maintenance as compare to surface irrigation (130), damage to system due to rats and other animals (122), problems in farming operations, irrigation quantity by drip seems to be insufficient for crop growth (112) and irrigation is to be done more frequently (107) etc. 92% of the respondent scored high initial investment as most important. Two constraints (i) No need of drip irrigation as sufficient water is available for present method and (ii) easy and cheap labour availability in conventional method were least important constraints with score of 18 and 10 respectively.