| To ensure agricultural science and technology (S&T) to be extended and adopted effectively, it's necessary to comprehend the farmers'requirement and priority order of technologies under extension. The rice farmers who produce the foremost cereal in China as this article research focus.A combination method of spot interviews and delivering questionnaire was used for sampling investigation, typical investigation and key-point investigation on 1000 households from 50 villages of 10 counties belonging to eight provinces. Using statistical analyzing software SAS to generate summary tables and frequency analysis, we analyzed the approaches and channels of new technologies that the farmers acquired and adopted, the mostly concerned problems of farmers and rice-producing technologies the farmers adopted in recent three years as well as their requirement of rice technologies. Additionally, studies on concrete needs of rice-producing technologies and priority order of rice farmers are carried on in this paper. And the results are listed as follows:(1) Now and future, enquiring to county-level and township-level agricultural technicians is still the main channel for farmers to get access to new technology. No matter in the now or past, eighty percent of rice farmers get access to new technologies through this way despite that the percentage is descending gradually. Compared with the data observed three years ago, the number of large-area growers decreased whereas the number of small- and middle-area growers climbed. And the proportion of high-income households and low-income households declined as opposed to the proportion of middle-income households increased remarkably. The most important alternative for rice farmers to get access to new technologies is the media. There are about 57 percent of farmers who get know new technologies by TV, newspapers, books and magazines. The more the farmer earn, the higher accessible ratio is. On the other hand, for those low-income farmers, they acquire new technologies through enquiring their peers or learning from the public bulletins of the villages. In contrast with the facts three years ago, the farmers now pay more attention to the sources and channels for new agricultural technologies. They actually demand varied channels to get access to latest information and become more conscious of agricultural technology expo, information released on the public bulletins of the villages and communications with other farmers.(2) The mostly concerned problem of the farmers investigated is that whether they can make more money and production per unit when they choose the new technology. As compared to the past three years, percentages of farmers who care about subsidy and extension obligation from superior organizations are lower than before for 13.7% and 50%, whereas the percentage of farmers who consider income increase and yield improvement are high for 57.7% and 32%, respectively.(3) In the past three years, about 50% of the farmers have selected firstly Integrated Prevention Management (IPM) technology and dry-raising seedling & thin-planting technology. Additionally, over 40% of the farmers have adopted or hoped to know seedling-broadcasting technology, balanced fertilizing and direct-seeding technology.In the past several years, some common aspects lie in agricultural technologies that farmers with varied annual income adopted: first, farmers with varied annual income adopted the same technologies for prevention and controlled of diseases,insects, dry-raising seedling & thin-planting. Technologies that farmers adopted can be ranked according to the proportion (from the highest to the lowest): disease and insect IPM technology, dry-raising seedling & thin-planting technology, seedling broadcasting, balanced fertilizing, one-time fertilization technology and direct-seeding technology. Second, farmers with different income levels for one certain technology vary accordingly in terms of demand. Low-income farmers demonstrated higher demand degree of those technologies than high-income farmers. In addition, farms of different regions proved to be different regarding demand for technologies except that all rice farmers need the disease and insect IPM technology. For instance, for rice farmers in north-eastern areas, over 90% farmers need dry-raising seedling technology whereas more than 50% rice farmers from the middle and low reaches of Yangtze River are more concerned with dry-raising seedling & thin-planting technology, seedling broadcasting and direct-seeding technology, and balanced fertilization technology are more popular in west rice-growing areas.(4) Priority order of rice technology service of farmers in future is high-yielding varieties, high-yielding and good-quality varieties, good-quality varieties, accurate forecasting technology for diseases & insect, accurate prevention and control technology of diseases & insect, compound fertilizer, biologic pesticide, organic fertilizer, balanced fertilization technology, harvesting machinery, no-tillage technology, transplanting machinery, water-saving irrigation, etc. Although rice varieties and new technologies are the common demand, they vary in terms of different rice-growing areas. Over two-thirds of the rice farmers in northeast areas demand high-yielding and good-quality varieties; 50% farmers hope to obtain high-yielding varies in central and east China rice-growing areas; 80% farmers focus on how to improve the yields through growing high-yielding varieties in west China rice-growing areas. Farmers from different provinces in south China areas demand different rice-producing technologies. More than 50% of farmers in Anhui require high-yielding varieties and harvesting & transplanting machinery; over two-thirds farmers in Hubei require high-yielding and good-quality varieties; more than 60% of farmers in Hunan require high-yielding varieties and accurate prevention and control technology of diseases & insect; 70% of farmers in Jiangxi require high-yielding and good-quality varieties; 80% of farmers in Sichuan require high-yielding varieties and more than 80% of farmers in Jiangsu require high-yielding and good-quality varieties.Relying on results of this study, the following countermeasures and suggestions are concluded: Strengthening technological innovations of varieties and improving rice grain quality; Simplifying extension procedures of agricultural technologies and exerting the function of existing organization for extension of agricultural technologies;Establishing fast and convenient channels for transfer of agricultural S&T achievements and accelerating the disseminating speed of new varieties and technologies;Intensifying R&D of new pesticides and studies on accurate forecasting and prevention of diseases and insects;Reinforcing R&D of machineries for rice production. |
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