Farmers’ Adoption of Agricultural Innovations and Their Impact

Dear Colleagues,

The adoption of innovations (i.e., new technologies and practices) is critical to the ongoing development of agriculture. Agricultural innovations are key drivers in the sustainable intensification of systems, potentially leading to increases in productivity, input use efficiency, profitability, resilience, and/or food and nutritional security. However, before these potential benefits are unlocked, farmers must decide to adopt the innovations, depending on a broad and complex range of factors. Disappointing adoption rates of agricultural innovations can often be explained by a combination of enabling environments, economic drivers, risk factors, broader social context, extension efforts, level of farmer engagement, and sometimes the technologies themselves. The important aim of achieving impact (economic, social, and/or environmental) follows on from the successful adoption of the innovations.

This Special Issue focuses on new knowledge about the adoption of agricultural innovations and the impacts of that adoption, both in developed and developing country contexts. This can take a number of forms, including but not limited to:

• Examination of drivers or barriers to adoption;
• Experience of adoption successes and failures;
• Diffusion or communication of innovations in a social system;
• Farmer information seeking;
• Farmer decision-making;
• Relative advantage of innovations;
• Dis-adoption or partial adoption;
• Impact pathways;
• Participatory processes for developing innovations;
• Agricultural innovation systems;
• Novel methodological approaches to adoption research.

The call is open to all who are interested in this topic.

Dr. Marta Monjardino
Dr. Geoff Kuehne
Dr. Khondoker Abdul Mottaleb
Guest Editors

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