farmer decision making

RedRoads asks:
Ever thought that an Australian farmer not adopting your latest good idea (particularly when your good idea is a service) is just plain dumb?

Don’t let the flannel shirt fool you. If growers are not buying it ask the question: does my explanation of its usefulness demonstrate a believable positive outcome?     

The literature suggests that you may be wrong. See below an exert from a study that concluded that the reason for slow uptake of many so called innovations is the fault of those promoting it, and that while farmers may not appear to make decisions like someone formally trained in managerial-economics many instinctively go through a similar information analysing process.

 Adopter categories – characteristics

Rogers (1983) argued that depending on the level of innovativeness of an individual within a social system that farmers could be segmented into adopter categorise according to how quickly they implemented a new technology (Figure 2.2). Communication behaviours, personality variables, and socioeconomic characteristics could be used to make predictions about an individual’s likely adoption behaviour. While an extension officer (or marketer of a new product) may not be able to change the characteristics of an individual, this model may be useful in targeting product launches at those likely to adopt early.  The reliability of predicting the adoption of innovations based on the characteristics of farmers as modeled by Rogers (1983) has been questioned by numerous researchers. (Guerin and Guerin 1994; Reid, Coulson and Cameron 1996) point out that the model was embedded in the paradigm that technologies developed by scientists would be inherently good for farmers, and that they should adopt was a matter of course.  Figure 2.2: Adopter Categorisation on the Basis of Innovativeness  

 Source: (Rogers 1983, p 247)Farinos, Cecora, and Cecora (1994) explored Spanish farmer attitudes and adoption of seven types of innovations. While they were able to classify farmers as early innovators, easy adopters, and imitators they found that the division of farmers into these categories differed for each type of innovation. Further, Frank (1995) argues that the somewhat derogatory term of ‘laggards’ given to those slow to adopt a new technology is misleading, because it ignores the possibility that some farmers make a conscious and correct decision that the new technology is not of value in their particular environment. While some of these latter authors may appear to challenge Rogers (1983) explanation of innovation diffusion he did not stop at the categorisation of adopters, and went on to explore the effect of the nature of the innovation itself.

So back to your good idea that is not flying….time to have another think about for whom it is a good idea.