By Reliance Books

04/28/2009 Author -Dr Santosh N Kadam                                                                                         Rs 400/- ISBN 81-7510-204-7 
FOREWORD
            Agriculture in India predominantly influences the process and pace of economic development. The success in achieving the development objectives rests primarily on the performance of the agriculture and related sectors. Since agriculture in India is not only a business but also a way of life. The farm technology becomes a hereditary process where in it passed on from father to his son and so on. As time passes, advances in farm technology takes place through the improvement in extension services, communication and transportation facilities. Farm technology in agriculture is crucial and important because land is crucial input which is limited in its supply. Hence, alternative way to increase the farm production is to switch over to new farm technology in view to meet increasing demand for farm products.
It is reality that new agricultural technology, initiated since mid sixties, has brought about socio-economic improvement among the farmers who have adopted such innovations particularly in irrigated areas. However, in the Rainfed areas farmers are relatively reluctant to use such a new technology due to lack of resources, modern skills among farmers and uncertainty associated with the production. Hence, in India new farm technology has not received universal acceptance due to uneven development of physical infrastructural facilities like, Irrigation, Marketing etc. More importantly, the adoptability of new technology in agriculture depends upon the extent of responsiveness of the farmer to new ideas. Education and farm extension services play important role in making society receptive to new ideas. Against this background, the study carried out by Mr. Santosh Kadam, is important. It has examined the level of adoptation of new agricultural technology by farmers in one of the most drought prone areas of Maharashtra State. It has observed that new innovations in agriculture have brought about the socio-economic improvement of the farmers through changes in land use, cropping pattern, production pattern enhancement in productivity and employment in the drought prone areas. Moreover, It has also studied various problems associated with new agricultural technology across the various strata of farmers and also suggested appropriate measures in view to bring about technological changes in such rainfed agriculture.
I am sure this invistigation would be useful to design policy guidelines in future for making rainfed agriculture more dynamic.
 Prof. Dr. R.G. DANDGE
Department of Economics,
Shivaji University, Kolhapur
Maharashtra