Adopting Technology in Local Agriculture to Achieve Sustainable Rural Development

Dear Colleagues,

Technology adoption in local agriculture is at the core of many policy interests in developing countries, attracting a significant portion of development assistance funds. By technology, we refer here to any intervention that aims to “improve” the existing production process (including changes in inputs, practices, or labor requirements)—and by local agriculture, we refer to all fields of agriculture, including crop cultivation, livestock rearing, aquaculture and agro-forestry, as well as studies beyond the farm gate (i.e., agri-food value chains, agro-tourism, and similar).

The ultimate goals of rural interventions are often stated as “sustainable rural development” and “improved wellbeing and livelihoods of local communities”. Nonetheless, monitoring and evaluation of the “success” of such interventions tends to measure changes in financial returns to farmers only, relegating wellbeing and social and environmental sustainability to peripheral and often unaccounted for roles.

In this Special Issue, we are therefore particularly interested in studies that question assumptions of the “sustainability” of agricultural interventions. We argue that changes in short-term financial returns have questionable linkage to sustainability of an intervention and, quite the opposite, might encourage kinds of behaviors and practices which result in the loss of wellbeing, social or natural capital.

Further, we argue that women and youth often face barriers to truly engaging in decision making on the farm and beyond, which has consequences for succession planning, migrations, and ultimately, sustainability of rural development.

And finally, we argue that “new proven technologies” resulting in “visible benefits” might be neither so proven nor so beneficial, once wellbeing and the aspects of sustainability beyond economic sustainability are fully accounted for and explored. 

A better understanding of aspects of adoption discussed here might go a long way in furthering our understanding of why adoption rates are, more often than not, below donor and policy makers’ expectations and targets; and why the adoption process and scaling up take so long. We also invite submissions on aspects related to technology adoption and sustainable development that are not discussed here: Decisions that farmers must take are multidimensional, and thus, so will be the research fields that explore them. Manuscripts dealing with the sustainable rural development of peripheral regions of developed countries; risk taking and other relevant behaviors; information dissemination; climate change; etc. are all welcome. 

This issue will equally consider contributions based both on case studies that expand our current knowledge on the relationship between new technologies and sustainable rural development, as well as theoretical studies that provide an overview of the existing literature and/or methods that can be used to measure and evaluate financial and non-financial contributions that new technologies make.

We also argue that adoption (or lack thereof) of new technologies is not technology-specific but faces very similar challenges regardless of the field of agriculture. We trust that by starting from the point of view of sustainability and improved wellbeing, rather than that of the specific agricultural technology and the quest for its adoption, we can contribute to a more holistic exploration of this important field of work.

Dr. Silva Larson
Guest Editor

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• agriculture
• livestock
• aquaculture
• agro-forestry
• gender
• succession planning
• wellbeing