AGRICULTURAL INNOVATIONfarm incomes had declined, and high interest rates
had resulted in poor debt-to-asset ratios. What
followed was a massive (50 percent) decapitalization
of agriculture, particularly in the Midwest and
Great Plains.
Criticisms of adoption-diffusion research in-
clude (1) pro-innovation bias; (2) a lack of consid-
eration of all the consequences of innovation; (3)
an individual bias; (4) methods problems; (5) Ameri-
can ethnocentric biases; (6) the passing of the
dominant modernization-development paradigm.
The pro-innovation bias of researchers has led
them to ignore the negative consequences of inno-
vation (van Es 1983). Indeed, innovativeness itself
is positively valued (Downs and Mohr 1976). The
agencies that fund research and the commercial
organizations (e.g., seed companies) that support
it have strong vested interests in promoting diffu-
sion. Furthermore, successful innovations leave
visible traces and can be more easily studied using
retrospective social surveys, so researchers are
more likely to focus on successful innovations.
Since most researchers are well aware of this
problem, it can be addressed by deliberately focus-
ing on unsuccessful innovations, and by studying
discontinuance and reinvention. It can also be
avoided by the use of prospective research de-
signs, including qualitative comparative case stud-
ies, that track potential innovation and innovators’
perceptions and experiences. This should facili-
tate the investigation of noncommercial innova-
tions and should result in a better understanding
of the reasons why people and organizations de-
cide to use new ideas. Moreover, these methods
will likely lead to a better understanding of the
system context in which innovations diffuse.
One of the most strident critiques of the pro-
innovation bias of the ‘‘land-grant college com-
plex’’ was voiced by Hightower (1972). Agricultur-
al scientists at Davis, California, worked on the
development and diffusion of hard tomatoes and
mechanized pickers (Friedland and Barton 1975).
They ignored the effects of these innovations on
small farms and farm labor, except in the sense
that they designed both innovations to solve labor
problems expected when the U.S. Congress ended
the bracero program through which Mexican work-
ers were brought in to harvest the crops. In the six
years after that program ended (1964 to 1970) the
mechanical harvester took over the industry. About
thirty-two thousand former hand pickers were out
of work. They were replaced by eighteen thousand
workers who rode machines and sorted tomatoes.
Of the four thousand farmers who produced to-
matoes in California in 1962, only six hundred
were still in business in 1971. The tomato industry
honored the inventor for saving the tomato for
California, and consumers got cheaper, harder
tomatoes—even if they preferred softer ones.Several other classic examples of agricultural
innovation illustrate problems that result from not
fully considering the consequences of innovation
(Fliegel and van Es 1983). Until the late 1970s rural
sociologists, among others, studiously ignored Wal-
ter Goldschmidt’s 1940s study (republished in
1978) of the effects of irrigation on two communi-
ties in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Dinuba had
large family farms, and it also had more local
business, greater retail sales, and a greater diversi-
ty of social, educational, recreational, and cultural
organizations. Arrin was surrounded by large in-
dustrial corporate farms supported by irrigation.
These farms had absentee owners and Mexican
labor. This produced a much lower quality of life
that was confirmed three decades later (Buttel et
al. 1990, p. 147).The enforced ban on earlier chemical innova-
tions in agriculture by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration provides another interesting ex-
ample. Chemical innovations such as DDT insecti-
cide, 2,4-D weed spray, and DES cattle feed revolu-
tionized farm production in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1972, DDT was banned because it constituted a
health threat (Dunlap 1981), and 2,4-D, DES, and
similar products were banned soon afterward.
Finally, in 1980 the U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture reversed its policy and began to advise farm-
ers and gardeners to consider alternative, organic
methods that used fewer chemicals.The impact of technical changes in U.S. agri-
culture, particularly the rapid mechanization be-
gun in the Great Depression, put farmers on the
‘‘treadmill of technology’’ (Cochran 1979; LeVeen
1978). Larger farmers who are less risk-aversive
adopt early, reap an ‘‘innovation rent,’’ reduce
their per-unit costs, and increase profits. After the
innovation spreads to the early majority, aggre-
gate output increases dramatically. Prices then fall
disproportionately, since agricultural products have
low elasticity of demand. Lower, declining prices