ABSTRACT
Agricultural productivity is a significant determinant of the terms of trade faced by a country in international markets (Lewis, 1978) and agricultural development plays a central role in all scenarios of overall economic development. The most important agents of agricultural productivity gains are rural farmers, who, whatever the source of the technical advances, must utilize and adopt innovations in order for the technical progress to be embodied in realized output. An important question in the study of economic development is what characteristics of farmers, the new technologies and rural markets are associated with more rapid or more efficient transformations of technological advances into higher food productivity. A related issue is the income distributional consequences associated with technology adoption within the rural sector.
