Publication

Abstract : Over abstraction of groundwater and over use of phosphatic fertilizer in the farmer's field, one of the cause of fluoride contamination in groundwater. In India, many studies have reported that the groundwater contaminated with fluoride. Tamil Nadu is one among fluoride contaminated state. Farmers are irrigating the crops through groundwater for high water consumption crops such as paddy, maize and sugarcane. Water saving technologies shifted the production function up and also reduced the abstraction of groundwater. An attempt was made to study the level of adoption of agricultural technologies among fluoride affected farmers for major crops and analysed the factors influencing water saving technologies in fluoride affected locales. Primary data was collected from 184 farmers through multistage random sampling technique. Technology adoption index and logit model was used. The results showed that most of the farmers were non adopters of water saving technologies compared to adopters of technologies in fluoride affected locales. Age, education, experience of farmers, farm income, depth of well, awareness about fluoride contamination and contact with extension personnel were significantly influenced the water saving technologies adoption. Therefore, the efforts are required to intensify the extension education activity to increase awareness among the farmers so as to accelerate the process of adoption as it is one of the measure to avert fluoride contamination