Abstract
A survey of 102 Mojeno and 62 Yuaare Amerindian households in the department of Beni in the Bolivian rain forest was done to measure the effects of household and village attributes, ethnicity, and markets on the adoption of chemical herbicides and insecticides for farming. We hypothesized: i) that village attributes would matter more among households with weak links to the market, ii) that education and income would matter more in households integrated to the market, and iii) that ethnic membership would not matter because, as a null hypothesis, we assume all cultures are equally adept at processing information about technological innovations. The results of a probit model with Huber robust standard errors did not confirm any of the hypotheses. Village variables were statistically significant at all levels of integration to the market. Contrary to human capital theory, income and education played a more prominent role in relatively autarkic villages. Ethnicity was statisitically significant in the pooled sample and at different levels of integration. Results suggest that conventional detemrinants of adoption of new farm technologies may need reappraisal in more autarkic settings.