EDO 812 Module 3 Diffusion and Adoption of Innovations Example

Why the Rye Is Not Spreading: Diffusion Theory and a Network Strategy for Cover Crops in a Plains Extension District

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Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University

EDO 812: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Why the Rye Is Not Spreading: Diffusion Theory and a Network Strategy for Cover Crops in a Plains Extension District

For ten years, Plains State Extension has promoted cover crops in its northern district: grasses, legumes or mixes such as cereal rye planted after harvest to hold soil over winter. The research case is strong in general terms. Cover crops can reduce erosion and runoff, and over several years they may improve soil organic matter and water infiltration. The service has published fact sheets, held meetings and posted videos. Yet cover crops are planted on only about 9% of the district's cropland, and adoption has crept up by less than a point a year. Diffusion theory can account for the stall and suggest a better route. The service, the district and the figures are invented, and the agronomic statements are general.

The Attributes of the Innovation

Rogers (2003) pulled together thousands of studies, many of them from farm communities like this one, into an account of how new practices travel among people. His summary holds that the speed of uptake depends heavily on how prospective users judge five qualities. The first is whether the new practice beats the old one in the user's own terms, which Rogers called relative advantage. The second is compatibility, how comfortably it sits with a person's habits, values and past experience. The third is complexity. The fourth, trialability, asks whether someone can test it in a small way before committing. The fifth, observability, asks whether results show where others can see them. Rogers also sorted people by when they take up a practice, from the first venturesome few to the cautious last, and found that respected local opinion leaders set the pace for many of the people around them.

The rating shows that the problem lies mainly in the innovation's attributes, not in farmers' attitudes. A practice whose failures are easy to see and whose successes are hard to see will spread slowly however many fact sheets describe it.

When Innovations Pay

Griliches (1957) studied the spread of hybrid corn across the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. He found that adoption followed an S-shaped curve in each area but that areas differed greatly in when adoption began, how fast it proceeded and how far it went. These differences were explained largely by economics: hybrid seed became available first where seed companies expected the largest market, and farmers adopted it faster and more completely where the gain in profit was greater. His work challenged accounts that treated diffusion purely as a matter of communication and attitudes.

The district's data fit Griliches's view. Adoption reaches about 22% in the three counties where a state cost-share program pays farmers part of the seeding cost and where cattle can graze the cover crop in spring, adding value. In counties without grazing, adoption stays near 5%. Where cover crops pay, farmers adopt them.

Learning From Neighbors

Conley and Udry (2010) studied pineapple farmers in Ghana adopting a new technology that required learning how much fertilizer to use. Collecting detailed data on who talked to whom about farming, they found that farmers adjusted their fertilizer use in response to the results their information neighbors obtained: when a neighbor in their network had unexpectedly good results using more or less fertilizer than the farmer, the farmer moved toward the neighbor's level. Farmers learned from those they talked to, not from geographic neighbors in general.

The finding matters because the district's fact sheets come from the university, while farmers' decisions are shaped by people they talk to at the elevator, the church and the coffee shop. A successful cover crop on a respected neighbor's field is the observability the practice otherwise lacks.

The Delivering Organization

Greenhalgh et al. (2004) read across several hundred studies of how new practices spread through health and social care organizations and drew a model with many moving parts: the practice itself, the people taking it up, the channels of influence among them, the receiving organization's preparation and history, pressures from outside and the way implementation is carried out. They warned against treating diffusion as a simple transmission from source to user and emphasized that the organization's structure, absorptive capacity, receptive context and the linkage between developers and users all affected whether innovations spread and were sustained. They also noted how little was known about sustaining innovations once adopted.

Applied to the service, the review points inward. County educators in the district vary in their own cover crop knowledge, and the service's workload system rewards meetings held, not practices adopted. The service has also never asked farmers who tried cover crops and stopped why they stopped.

A Diffusion Strategy

The analysis points to four changes. First, the service will fund twelve demonstration farms for three years, chosen not by size or enthusiasm but by their place in local farmer networks, identified by asking farmers whom they talk to about farming decisions. Second, each host will be paired with five nearby farmers who plant a trial strip on one field, using the practice's trialability and limiting the cost of failure. Third, field days will be held in April, when soil differences between covered and bare fields are visible, rather than in winter meeting halls. Fourth, the service will advocate expanding cost-share and will develop grazing agreements between crop farmers and cattle owners, addressing the relative advantage that Griliches shows matters most. Educators will be evaluated by acres in trial, not meetings held.

Limits of the Strategy

Diffusion theory cannot remove the short-run cost of cover crops. Where they do not pay within a few years, better communication may only spread a practice that hurts farm finances. The strategy therefore measures not only adoption but also how many farmers continue after three years, the sustainability Greenhalgh and colleagues found understudied.

Conclusion

Cover crops spread slowly because their costs are immediate and visible and their benefits delayed and hidden. Rogers explains the attributes behind that pattern, Griliches shows that adoption follows profit, Conley and Udry show that farmers learn from those they talk to and Greenhalgh and colleagues point to the service's own readiness. Demonstration farms chosen for their network position, trial strips, spring field days and better economics offer a strategy fitted to those findings.

References

Conley, T. G., & Udry, C. R. (2010). Learning about a new technology: Pineapple in Ghana. American Economic Review, 100(1), 35-69. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.1.35

Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Macfarlane, F., Bate, P., & Kyriakidou, O. (2004). Diffusion of innovations in service organizations: Systematic review and recommendations. The Milbank Quarterly, 82(4), 581-629. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0887-378X.2004.00325.x

Griliches, Z. (1957). Hybrid corn: An exploration in the economics of technological change. Econometrica, 25(4), 501-522. https://doi.org/10.2307/1905380

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press.