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E~zdowr~tcnt of l~ouselrol~f assets. Of the household assets that \\.ere
considered, all adopters and 72% of nonadopters had radios (Table 16). More
nonadopters o\\lned television sets than adopters. None of the nonadopters owned
bicycles or motorbikes, but adopters did. A bus was owned by a nonadopter. There
was no definite pattern ofdifferences in ownership of household assets. These
findings are consistent with the marginally different personal incomes of adopters
and nonadopters.
hTzltritioti. Nutrition, which is one of the most important variables in
measuring social well-being, plays a major role in enhancing health conditions and
increasing the quality of labor. Calories and protein are the major components of a
balanced diet.
Each adopter consumed 2,126 cal/d; \\.hereas, each nonadopter consumed
2,080 cal/d. Per capita consumption of protein per d:~y was 55 g for adopters and
52 g for nonadopters. There \+.ere no significant differences in daily per capita
calorie consuniption or protein consumption between adopters and nonadopters. No
direct inipact of the technology on nutrition \\.;IS observecl.
E.vpcnriitiir.c ur~rf .rrr\linss. Expenditures on food by both categories of farniers
were very similar. Almost 40% of the total expenditure of adopters was spent on
food consumption; whereas, nonadopters spent nearly 33% of their total
expenditure 011 food (Table 17).
Adopters had higher average savings than non:ldopters, l~ut the difference
was not significant (Table 17). In the ahsence of any differe~ices in n~ltritional
intake, the expenclitures and s:~vings tally well with the niargin:ll income advantage
that farmers recei\.ed by adopting the new fClr~iiing sjJsterns technology.
Limitations of the study
The study, initiated in 1087-88, suffered :l break in d:itrl collection because of
unstable conditions in the countrv. Therefore, some issues pertaining to the stability
and sustainability of the te~Iiiiol6~~ could not be addressed. Howe\,er, the fact that
overall cropping intensities \{,ere high, which ensured high f:lrni incomes, indicates a
certain degree of stability o\.er time. The an;llysis of production functions for the
crops suffered from niulticolline:~rity. Therefore, input use per hectare had to be
used in some cases as a proxy for the theoretically perfect ir:put [Ice per far~ii. This
restricted the analysis to structural changes, but the cstirn;~tt.d coefficients could not
be interpreted as production elr~sticities of inputs, and the :lnalysis could not be
extended to determine returns to scale and factor shares. Therefore, the study of
factor and income shares was limited to an accounting analysis at the average level.
A more detailed analysis for above-average, average, and below-average farmers
would have been preferable, but could not be conducted bec:luse the samples were
limited to 19 adopters and 18 nonadopters.