Whether it is lack of faith of farmers on soil testing results and recommendations based on the soil tests or they have tendency to apply more fertilizers to ensure that yields do not suffer due to nutrient deficiency.
I think farmers in developing countries are not progressive enough, therefore they do not have trust in soil testing. Their thinking is traditional, that greater application of fertilizers would give greater yield.
Well, frankly sometimes is lack of faith of farmers in results of soil testing, but morever I think the lack of knowledge is even dominant reason for that. The Ministries of Agriculture in developing countries must support and organize the Agricultural Extension Services in order to achieve dissemination of basic and special skills and competences of farmers. On the other hand, the mentality of farmers is generally quite different than mentality of enterpreners in industry. On other words, the farmers belive much more to someone who has the money than to someone who has the arguments. That means, the farmers always trust much more to merchants of fertilizers, pesticides and other agricultural supply materials than to agricultural experts in role of educators or official disseminators. Thus, even some legislation about obligation of farmers to provide soil testing at least every third year is more than required.
I don't think it is lack of faith. Ignorance and poverty could be a better reason. I am from this part of the world and I know what am saying. Many farmers do not even know what we called soil testing or even see the benefit of it to their farming system. Their only reason for applying fertilizer is based on their experience or their ability to compare previous years yields. And even if they got to know in one way the other then the issue of how it costs will set in. Spending on what looks not benefiting is taken as great lost to them. What recommendation comes out of testing is another issue. Orientation maybe the key to change their mentality.
There are several factors not to go for consultations of expertise:
illiteracy, ignorance, and lack of faith of farmers are the issues of concerned but the other major factors are insufficient and poor soil testing approach, which puts question mark on the timeliness and reliability of the reports.
Because: 1) there are no labs to test soil fertility. 2) weak agriculture extension, people don't know that how is it important to apply fertilizer after knowing soil fertility.
@Beemnet Mengesher. I won't agree with you on the number one reason. You see the most common and easiest research to carry out on Africa soil today is soil and water analyses. There are a lot expertise in both environmental and analytical capacities. Today, statistics will give nothing less than 70% of all the research done by Chemists in Africa in favour of soil analysis. The problems is not as a result of having limited or conpetent in the field but mainly the ignorance and poverty level of the local farmers.
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