Age and the adoption of recommended agricultural practices among peasant farmers in Guatemala: A reexamination
Description
Despite trends toward proletarianization, urbanization and the dominance of large-scale export oriented agribusiness in the third world, peasant farming, and its attendant forms of familial and social organization, have persisted throughout the twentieth century. While a number of factors have left the peasantry in a precarious economic situation, the importance of the small family farm as a source of cheap and readily available seasonal labor, encourages interventions designed to contribute to its survival. In the past, these interventions have often focused on the use of chemical products shown to increase crop yields in the agricultural sectors of industrialized nations. Many of these recommended practices have proven to be both personally and environmentally risky. Development programs have now begun to focus on the practices more appropriate to 'sustainable development' in the third world. As we move toward new development strategies it is important to reexamine the results of previous efforts so that the lessons learned from them can be carried forward into the newer models This study utilizes data from the Basic Village Education Project to reexamine the relationship between a peasant farmer's age and his tendency to adopt recommended agricultural practices within the context of the specific economic and social conditions extant in Guatemala in the mid-1970s. Findings based on multivariate analyses indicate that the age/practice adoption relationship is much more complicated than often assumed. Younger farmers are advantaged in terms of literacy skills and cosmopolitanism which tend to encourage practice adoption. Older farmers, however, are advantaged in terms of control of the economic resources often necessary for practice change. When these age-related factors are controlled, younger farmers are more likely than their elders to adopt the most personally and environmentally risky practices more consistent with the recommendation of programs based on the 'sustainable development' model. It is concluded that given these findings it would be wise for change-agents utilizing the 'sustainable development' model to specifically design educational strategies to reach the older farmers who have been the traditional decision makers in peasant communities