Analyzing Advantages and Barriers of Agricultural Mechanization Development: Case of Rice Transplanter Machine in Sari County

Historically, affordable machinery, which increased capability and standard of production and improved productivity, are key elements of agricultural mechanization. Transplanter machine in rice cultivation play such key role. The purpose of current descriptive-survey research was to identifying and analyzing advantages and barriers to use of transplanter machine in rice fields of Sari County. Statistical population consist of all the agricultural experts and agents (N=180) and rice cultivators (N=5560) in Sari County. By using Cochran formula 90 experts and 160 farmers selected as samples. Stratified sampling method with appropriate allocation within 2 sub-district and 14 villages was used to select farmers. The results showed that the two groups of respondents have consensus on advantages of the machine and emphasized on farmer healthy, reduced labor cost and saved time. In case of barriers, the results indicated that farmer highlighted economical barriers and expert emphasized on technical and educational barriers. The results of factor analysis for barriers revealed that the “technical-supportive barriers”, “economical barriers”, “extension-education barriers” and “socio-cultural barriers” explained 63.42% variance related to barriers to use of transplanter machine.