ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the factors as impediments to transforming traditional agriculture from a situation where farmers supply the bulk of their own inputs to a situation where they employ manufactured inputs. It discusses how farmers' perceptions of the production characteristics of manufactured inputs, their cognitive ability, and access to information can give rise to resistance or impediments to substituting new for traditional technologies. Cognitive ability, risk attitudes and information accessibility give rise to several potentially important impediments within the farm-firm itself that remain to be overcome if the use of and efficiency gains from new technologies are to be realized. The studies of Tunisian and Thai farmers, though limited, provide further evidence in support of risk and information as impediments in transforming traditional agriculture from the use of traditional farmer supplied inputs to the use of manufactured inputs. In Tunisia, farmers' risk attitudes were important determinants of the area planted to high yielding varieties of durum wheat.
