Reflections on Adoption of New Agricultural Practices

Abstract

Research on adoption of new practices, technologies and systems in agriculture has generated thousands of publications over the past 70 years, covering uptake of agricultural practices spanning more than 100 years. This paper contains selected key lessons from the results of this enormous research effort, drawn from numerous reviews of the literature and shaped by personal experience. The lessons include that trialling is not adoption, that extension is not necessarily the key to increasing adoption, that each new farming practice has its own adoption story, and that adoption is often slower than practice advocates expect, typically taking multiple decades. The identified lessons are juxtaposed with a number of flawed assumptions and misconceptions commonly held by people working in agricultural agencies. A number of methodological weaknesses are still common in existing studies, including neglect or poor representation of key variables, compromising the potential for the research to generate real understanding of adoption. This also inhibits comparison of studies and the application of meta‐analyses. Suggestions are made on ways to add value to the existing research and improve the quality of future research, including the collection and curation of good‐quality adoption data sets, the development of a searchable database of adoption studies, and the creation of best‐practice guidelines for the conduct of adoption research.