Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture Practices in Banana Farm Production: A Study from the Sindh Region of Pakistan.

The aim of this study was to highlight the importance of socioeconomic and psychosocial factors in the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) in banana farm production. To this end, data from 300 randomly selected farm households from Pakistan were collected through a structured self-report questionnaire. Using logistic regression (LR) and structural equation modeling (SEM), socioeconomic and psychosocial effects were evaluated. The results show that economic status, watching agricultural training programs, newspaper and radio awareness campaigns, participation in extension programs, perceptions of sustainable agriculture and the feasibility of SAPs were significant factors in farmers' adoption of sustainable agriculture practices. Also, consistent with the theory of planned behavior (TPB), all its dimensions (attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control) affected the adoption of SAPs. This finding highlights the importance of socioeconomic and psychosocial factors in promoting sustainable agricultural practice among banana production farmers. This is the first study which attempts to provide empirical evidence using a robust procedure (two models-LR and SEM). The practical implication is that, when socioeconomic and psychosocial factors are well supported by satisfactory policy measures, SAP adoption is more than likely, which eventually increases farmers' adaptive capacity to the changing environment. Ultimately, this leads to sustainable banana production, which has great potential to contribute towards poverty eradication.

Rethinking Food Production: Nexus of Mobile Phones and Production Cost Minimization.

Information and communication technologies are a ready tool for all strata of society and are indeed redefining the way almost everything is done. Mobile phone technology, in particular, plays a vital role in expediting improvement in the efficiency of the household resource through access to information on various available technologies. Can mobile phones improve the cost efficiency of agricultural production? Comprehension of such effect is critical, especially in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. We addressed this topic using cross-sectional data from smallholder maize producers in Zambia. The Stochastic Frontier Analysis was applied to estimate cost efficiency. The results indicate that mobile phone use improves the cost efficiency of maize production significantly and as such, adopters have made a rational decision to adopt mobile phone use for information access. Precisely, we found a 10.2% efficiency gap in favor of users. Nevertheless, if non-users were to adopt mobile phones for agricultural information access, maize production per hectare would increase by 21.38%. Eventually, food production would be increased in an environmentally friendly manner and the price of maize would be set at a competitive price within the region because agricultural inputs would be allocated cost efficiently. Therefore, in an attempt to minimize production cost in food production, this study strongly endorses the use of mobile phones for agricultural information access.