Factor that influence smallholder’s acceptance towards Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in rubber / Mohamad Nabil Md Zohir

Hevea brasiliensis is the major crop in Malaysia because it’s member of genus economically important tree that produce latex and cup lump. Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) is a government program under Department of Standard Malaysia to sustain the ecology safe and improve the rubber industry. Independent smallholders have some problem to carry out their activities followed by guideline of GAP and they do not understand about GAP. The farmers that have low profile will not be able to adopt GAP on their farms because of financial problem as well as lack of knowledge and information toward GAP. The objective of this survey is to study relationship between a few factors which is the independent variables such as knowledge, attitude, extension support and awareness with the smallholders’ acceptance of GAP in rubber as the dependent variables. For the second objective is to study the most dominant factors that influence the acceptance of GAP among smallholders. Based on Krejcie and Morgan, the primary data is collected through a questionnaire survey to 86 samples from the 110 of total year population of rubber independent smallholders in Mukim Hosba, Kubang Pasu, Kedah in Malaysia. Statistical Package for Social Science was being used for correlation and regression analysis. The higher correlation among the factors is attitude (0.606), knowledge (0.347), extension support (0.317) and awareness (0.499). All factors show a significant toward acceptance of GAP among smallholders. This research proved that there is a significant relationship between the smallholders’ knowledge, attitude, extension support and awareness with the acceptance of smallholders toward good agricultural practices (GAP) in Mukim Hosba in Kubang Pasu, Kedah. It can conclude that the knowledge, attitude, extension support and awareness is the factor that influence the acceptance of rubber smallholders toward good agricultural practices (GAP).