Factors affecting the adoption of research achievements by cotton farmers

Cotton crops is one of the basic agricultural products, which, in addition to providing raw materials for some industries such as textile and oil extraction, plays an important role in creating employment in the agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors. They depend on cotton for their livelihood. In addition to the direct and indirect employment factor, this product has significant added value. The stability and sustainability of cotton cultivation and production or any other product requires its competitiveness with other agricultural products in the region, and one of the solutions that determine the competitiveness of agricultural products is research and innovation. The use of new technologies from research on farms has a significant impact on the quantitative and qualitative yield of the crop. This study was conducted in 2020 year. According to the detailed results of the agricultural census, about 12,000 farmers are working in the field of cotton cultivation in Razavi Khorasan, and their total area under cotton cultivation in 1400 was about 20,000 hectares. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the use of new technologies obtained from research in cotton farms using Hobbman's two-stage Tobit model. The statistical population is cotton farmers in Khorasan Razavi province. The multi-stage sampling method was randomly selected and surveyed as 150 cotton farmers. Most of the reasons for not wanting to use new research technologies from farmers were low cultivation level, lack of knowledge about technology and lack of agricultural machinery, and the main reasons for not using new technologies were high cultivation level and possible increase of crop quality. Investigation of the final effect of factors and variables of probit pattern showed that area under cultivation, access to agricultural machinery, farmer's capital as well as farmer's literacy level, had a positive effect on the use of new technologies and factors such as age of the operator, persons under his care and lack of machinery. Agricultural tools and their renting have had a negative impact on the use of new technologies. In order to make optimal use of the research results, it is suggested to integrate land, increase the level of access of farmers to cheap bank credits to buy new technology and machinery, and also to provide the presence of supervising engineers in the fields of cotton farmers to inform the farmers to use one of the new technologies resulting from research in farms is very important and effective.