Adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations

Adoption is an individual process detailing the series of stages one undergoes from first hearing about a product to finally adopting it. Diffusion is a social process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system (Rogers 1995). The Diffusion of Innovations theory was the leading theory in agricultural extension post World War II until the 1970s.  It is still used today in agricultural extension, particularly when extension is concerned with an adoption of a particular technology (i.e. technology transfer approach to extension). Rate of adoption is a key feature of the theory – Everett Rogers developed adopter categories to ‘measure’ innovativeness of farmers to produce a statistical model (normal distribution curve) to show the distribution of the five adopter categories over the average time of adoption

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