Agricultural Mechanization and Gender Influence: A Case Study on the Adoption of Machine Harvestable Chickpeas in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India
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The first machine-harvestable chickpea variety, NBeG47, was released in Andhra Pradesh, India in 2015 to reduce on-farm labor burden from manual harvesting and maintain sufficient protein supply. This paper uses logistic regression to study factors associated with households adopting machine-harvestable chickpeas, and OLS regression to study the association of adopting machine-harvestable chickpeas with reducing female on-farm working time, and household and female dietary quality in rural India. We found that factors including household composition and family labor availability are statistically significantly correlated with the probability of households adopting machine-harvestable chickpeas. We also discover that adopting machine-harvestable chickpeas does significantly associate with releasing female labor on farms, while no evidence shows its correlation with the change in household/female dietary diversity status. To further promote the adoption of machine-harvestable chickpeas in rural India, it is essential for policymakers and local communities to cooperate together to facilitate multi-field innovations to ensure the smooth chickpea variety transformation process.