The survey goes more slowly than expected. This is the busy season for the farmers, so it is not easy to find time to talk with them. It also takes time to earn their trust and explain the questions to them. An interviewer can only interview 5 or 6 farmers per day. I do not get many students to help me. Only two or three students come to help on the weekends (they take lectures on weekdays).

So far I have collected the data of kinship ties in 3 groups and house neighbour ties in 5 groups. I should be able to get those in other groups next week as the group leaders have agreed to help me. The accountant of the village will give me the documents indicating the land plot neighbour ties in all 10 groups next week. And I have finished 95 household questionnaires. I take the households (1) who have lived and worked in this village since 2011 or before, or (2) those who started planting AS before 2005 and their related basic information can be offered by the household members and other farmers as the respondents. There are about 350 households  can be taken as the respondents in the villages. But I think we do not need to survey all of them. During the survey I find many households in each groups adopted the new variety at the same time and with very similar conditions. We can interview all the early adopters and late adopters which are not many, and some typical middle adopters in each group.  

I find there are two documentary materials that we can collect may be useful for the research. One is the fertilisers and pesticides sellers’ records. There are five big sellers which cover 80% transactions with farmers in the village. Almost all the transactions of fertilisers are on credit. The farmers pay at the end of the year. So the sellers have precise records of fertiliser sales. So far I have got all the records from one of the five sellers from 2003 on (some years are missing). I will try to get the records from other sellers. With these records I think I can study farmers’ behaviour of selecting fertilisers and pesticides sellers and maybe how some fertilisers or pesticides diffuse among farmers. The other material is the wholesalers’ records. There are about 30 wholesalers making transactions with farmers in the village. 5-6 big wholesalers cover about 30% of all the transactions. Wholesalers pay to the farmers for the transactions with one plot after the transactions with next plot have finished. Therefore they have precise records of all transactions with farmers. So far one wholesaler have agreed to give me his records. I will try to get others’. For these two materials I will buy from the owner if necessary.