Investigating factors affecting acceptance time for laser land leveling in Fars province

Providing strategies to increase water efficiency is one of the vital policies in agricultural sector. In this study, survival analyzing model was applied first to investigate factors affecting duration of accepting laser land leveling in centre of Marvdasht city. Then, the likelihood of accepting this technology by farmers was determined. Required data were collected by questionnaire based interviews from classified random sample of 240 farmers. Based on the findings of the survival analyzing model, age, agricultural background, education, extension classes, land under cultivation of crops, off-farm incomes, family size, financial shortage, small size of available lands and, lack of information about this technology and its benefits, have significant effects on delay in accepting laser leveling technology. Moreover, the possibility of accepting this technology by farmers has increased over time. That is around %60 of the farmers utilized the technology in 2007 and %86 in 2008. Based on the results, it is recommended to well inform farmers about the respected benefits of such technologies before introducing them in order to create sufficient incentives, and to provide financial supports, to facilitate accepting the technologies and consequently to increase water use efficiency in farms.