Increasing pressure on water resources is driving the development of technology to improve water-use efficiency in irrigation. Uptake of these technological advances are essential to ensure long-term water security in catchments, particularly in water-scarce regions and where agricultural activities and urban centres compete for the same resources. Research suggests that uptake of technology lags far behind the development of new products. The study presented in this paper interviewed 29 commercial farmers from the water-scarce Central Breede River Valley in South Africa to investigate their reasons behind the use or non-use of irrigation technology for scheduling, and in particular the uptake of a free, government-funded remote-sensing service called FruitLook. Evaluating the uptake of a free service eliminates monetary cost as one key barrier to uptake. In-depth interviews revealed a high uptake of technology (83%), but use of only one type – soil water measurement. Among the farmers that use water-use efficiency technology, 78% use the same probe service provider. Perceived accuracy and ease of use, as well as personalised after-sales service are the key reasons for this probe’s popularity. While 86% of the farmers have heard about FruitLook, only one farmer uses it for irrigation purposes. The non-use of the free service can mainly be attributed to the time cost associated with the product’s initial set-up, use, and interpretation of information. The study revealed that the integration of information from various products is essential for farmers – too much information in different formats is too time-costly. Developers of new technology should focus on these latter two findings to improve the likelihood of new product uptake.

对水资源的压力越来越大，正推动着提高灌溉用水效率的技术的发展。吸收这些技术进步对于确保流域的长期水安全至关重要，特别是在缺水地区以及农业活动和城市中心争夺相同资源的地区。研究表明，技术的采用远远落后于新产品的开发。本文介绍的研究采访了来自南非缺水的Central Breede流域的29位商业农民，以调查他们使用或不使用灌溉技术进行日程安排的原因，尤其是免费使用政府提供的灌溉服务。资助了名为FruitLook的遥感服务。评估免费服务的使用可以消除金钱成本，这是获取免费服务的主要障碍。深入的访谈显示，技术的吸收率很高（83％），但仅使用一种类型–土壤水分测量。在使用水利用效率技术的农民中，有78％的农民使用相同的探针服务提供商。感知准确性和易用性以及个性化的售后服务是该探头受欢迎的主要原因。尽管86％的农民听说过FruitFook，但只有一位农民将其用于灌溉目的。不使用免费服务的主要原因是与产品的初始设置，使用和信息解释相关的时间成本。该研究表明，整合来自各种产品的信息对于农民来说是必不可少的–太多不同格式的信息太耗时。新技术的开发人员应专注于后两个发现，以提高采用新产品的可能性。