Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Farmers’ Perceptions of Agricultural Sustainability Using the COARSE Method

Sustainability in Agriculture is an essential pursuit in this rapidly expanding tech-
driven world. The Farmer FIRST Programme is a flagship initiative of ICAR, aiming to
prioritize farmers by integrating indigenous technologies with newly developed ones. This
approach seeks to preserve sustainable and environmentally friendly technologies. The
present study was conducted during 2024-25 in ATARI Zone-X, where two adopted and two
non-adopted villages were selected from each of the five Institutes. From the adopted
villages, 30 beneficiary farmers were randomly selected, and from the non-adopted villages,
10 non-beneficiary farmers were randomly selected, making a total sample size of 400.
Through a thorough literature search and a preliminary survey among farmers, statements
measuring farmers' perceptions of sustainability were gathered which were then on
consultation with experts were checked and filtered. Using these statements a likert type of
scale was developed using COARSE method which was then used to collect final data the
responses from which were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis to validate the scale.
The responses were collected to assess the perception of farmers regarding sustainability in
agriculture. The majority of beneficiary farmers had a good (48.00%) perception, followed by
fair (37.00%) and poor (15.00%) perceptions. In contrast, most of the non-beneficiary
farmers had a fair (46.00%) perception, followed by poor (29.00%) and good (25.00%)
perceptions. By implementing strategies like public awareness campaigns, peer learning,
regular farmer-scientist interactions and by extension of farmer FIRST programme to non-
adopted villages farmers can be educated about sustainability in agriculture.