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Despite the fact that sustainable agricultural technologies and practices have been developed and introduced to farmers in both developed and developing countries, there are concerns about low levels of adoption. Empirical evidence of the past 40 years shows that adoption of new practices can be hindered by a wide range of factors, from financial to attitudinal, from personal to social, from agronomic to regulatory.Conclusions that can be generalised across different contexts could help in moving the institutional and policy environment in a direction that strengthens the move towards a more sustainable food production. This is particularly important regarding hotspots of environmental pollution, for example, the release of reactive nitrogen compounds in South Asia. This paper followed the PRISMA protocol and systematically reviewed the adoption literature in South Asia to identify factors that affect farmers' decisions to adopt sustainable agricultural technologies and practices. We found that education, extension and training, soil quality, irrigation, income and credit are significant drivers of farmers' adoption decisions. Consequently, efforts to promote the adoption of sustainable nitrogen management technologies will have to be tailored to consider these factors. We conclude that the variables that explain adoption in the studies reviewed could provide a foundation invaluable to research and policies that facilitate the adoption of sustainable nitrogen management technologies and practices in South Asia.

Deep placement of briquette urea (BU) is environmentally friendly and promotes for better nitrogen use efficiency. Nonetheless, its farm-level adoption is low. This paper contributes to the existing literature on climate-smart technology adoption by examining the factors that affect the BU adoption decision using the national representative Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS-15) dataset consisting of 3384 rice farmers in Bangladesh. BU adoption probability is higher for farms that specialize in rice production, have more assets, use mobile phones for farming and have better access to extension services. Also, empowered women have a higher propensity to adopt BU. However, living in the feed the future zone decreases adoption probability. BU adoption probability is inversely correlated with rainfall and salinity vulnerability, while the opposite is observed for cyclone and drought vulnerability. Compared to the prilled urea (PU) users, the BU adopters applied a significantly lower amount of urea. The adopters produce more and have a relatively higher return, though the differences are insignificant. The relatively high price of BU compared to PU and the associated high labor requirement dampers the benefit of adopting the technology. Reallocation of subsidies from PU toward BU could be an effective way of promoting BU technology.

Rice is the leading cereal crop in Nepal and an important source of calories and plant protein. Despite the importance of rice, there are reports of widespread cultivation of older varieties with considerably large adoption lags. This warrants further investigation into the factors that influence rice farmers’ adoption decisions. Risk attitude is reported to be an important determinant of farmers’ decisions. However, in Nepal, evidence of the effect of risk attitude on the adoption of improved crop varieties is limited because this important factor is not considered in adoption studies. This article, therefore, connects field experiment, theoretical understanding of farmers’ risk attitudes and empirical models with the aim of investigating determinants of farmers adoption of improved rice varieties in Nepal. The results show that majority of farmers currently grow old varieties. The top four varieties—Sona Mahsuri, Sarju-52, Samba Mahsuri and Radha-4—have an average varietal release age of 27 years. By estimating a binary response regression model, this article shows that risk attitude is a significant determinant of rice farmers’ adoption decision. Specifically, the results show that risk-tolerant farmers have the lowest propensity to adopt new improved rice varieties. This article, therefore, highlights the importance of promoting holistic benefits over making risk-reducing attributes salient when new crop varieties are developed and disseminated to farmers.