The concept of technology adoption (along with its companions, diffusion and scaling) is commonly used to design development interventions, to frame impact evaluations and to inform decision-making about new investments in development-oriented agricultural research. However, adoption simplifies and mischaracterises what happens during processes of technological change. In all but the very simplest cases, it is likely to be inadequate to capture the complex reconfiguration of social and technical components of a technological practice or system. We review the insights of a large and expanding literature, from various disciplines, which has deepened understanding of technological change as an intricate and complex sociotechnical reconfiguration, situated in time and space. We explain the problems arising from the inappropriate use of adoption as a framing concept and propose an alternative conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating technological change. The new approach breaks down technology change programmes into four aspects: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses. We begin to sketch out how this new framework could be operationalised.
7 pages., A survey was conducted to identify management information sources and communication channels used by commercially oriented smallholder beef cattle producers (n = 62) in Limpopo province, South Africa. A total of 62 commercially oriented smallholder farmers under the Limpopo Industrial Development Corporation-Nguni cattle project were interviewed using a structured questionnaire to collect data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse data on farmers’ demographic and farm characteristics, sources of information and communication channels used. A multinomial logistic regression model was used to evaluate factors that influenced farmers’ choices of information sources and communications channels used. Findings show that government extension (53% of the respondents) and other farmers (30%) were the major sources of management information for the farmers. Based on the logistic regression results, the decision to choose government extension as the main source of information was mainly influenced by respondents’ gender (p = 0.001) and access to training (p = 0.023). Communication was mainly through farm-to-farm visits (56%) and the use of mobile phones (30%). Based on the current findings, the infusion of modern information communication technologies such as mobile phone-based innovations with the existing government extension service could further strengthen the capacity of farmers to share information among themselves as well as providing feedback to extension agents. Furthermore, it is essential to take cognizance of farmers’ socio-economic factors when identifying and characterizing their management information sources and communication strategies.
