balanced approach, influencing the ability of farmers and organizations to cooperate in taking advantage of emerging technology innovations, opportunities and synergies. The present investigation analyses the existing technology utilization status in the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka state in India, as a prerequisite for developing and initiating innovative cashew production technology interventions for combating low productivity and profitability from cashew cultivation. An ‘ex-post-facto cause to effect’ design was used, and a rural appraisal ascertained that the levels of technology utilization were significantly low among cashew farmers in this region. The majority of farmers surveyed exhibited a medium level of technology utilization status. Seven variables viz., the age of cashew farmer, years of experience in farming, participation in extension programmes, number of crops grown, farm size, number of yielding cashew trees and expenditure incurred in cashew farming have a significant positive contribution, while two variables i.e. type of land used for cashew cultivation and distance of cashew plot from home had a significant negative contribution towards adoption of cashew production technologies. Stepwise regression yielded a model with eight predictors viz; number of cashew trees, other crops grown, cultivable land available, experience in farming, age of the farmer, participation in extension programmes, distance of cashew plot from the farmer’s home and years of experience in cashew farming; collectively explaining up to 69.7 per cent of the variation in technology utilization among cashew farmers. Understanding the above dynamics in farmers’ technology utilization process can help researchers and extension agencies working in cashew sector to design better innovations and effective outreach strategies.

Keyword: Technology utilization; Cashew production technologies; Determinants; Cashew farmers;