Opinion: Why are some technologies readily adopted and not others?

Irish farmers cannot influence the prices they receive for their products or what they pay for their inputs.

Profitability, therefore, is dependent on achieving productivity.

The late Adrian van Bysterveldt, who worked at the University of Lincoln, New Zealand, and spent a lot of time with Teagasc at Moorepark, used to emphasise that a key farming metric was “profit from productivity”. Productivity in turn is driven by the adoption of best practices and technologies.

Throughout my time in Teagasc, I was always intrigued by those practices and technologies that farmers readily adopted and those that they didn’t.

The evolution of productivity in agriculture is marked by several best practice and technological innovations. The widespread use of chemical fertiliser was one of the great breakthroughs. In Ireland in the late 1950s, soil productivity was exceptionally poor, so much so that the subsidisation of fertiliser was recommended in TK Whitaker’s first Programme for Economic Expansion.

Through the 1960s, major strides were made in forage conservation and milking.

These trends accelerated in the run up to EU accession and afterwards. In the early 1980s, baled silage was a hugely important innovation in forage conservation and was quickly adopted by Irish farmers.

In the late 1980s, the fertility problems with our dairy herd led to huge advances in genetics and the emergence of the EBI. This development was amplified by the emergence of genomic selection in 2009.

Genetics

In my estimation, animal genetics has been the outstanding innovation over the last 40 years, returning about €20m for every €1m invested. More recently, the widespread adoption of sexed semen is a standout feature.

But not every innovation has been equally successful, and that’s the puzzle.

It’s generally accepted that the adoption of innovations over time can in general be approximated by a S-shaped or sigmoidal curve.

In the early stages, only a handful of farmers adopt the innovation but after a period of time, as more and more farmers see the innovation in practice, there is an accelerated level of uptake that eventually plateaus.

For some technologies and best practices, this plateau can be achieved across a very high percentage of farmers but for others, it can be much lower. For instance, while we’ve made great strides in encouraging farmers to adopt best practice grazing systems, the level of adoption has not been as successful as in the area of animal genetics.

There are many reasons for this.

As an economist, my first rationale is to see whether the economics stack up. Will the benefits of adoption outweigh the costs? When they clearly do, it’s difficult to understand then why so many technologies and practices that fall into this category don’t get taken up by many farmers.

In the Teagasc MACC, a number of technologies are shown to mitigate carbon that make farmers money, such as, higher EBI, reduced finishing age, liming, clover use, extended grazing, improved animal health, etc, yet many farmers do not adopt these technologies.

Awareness

Farmer awareness is often cited as a factor. I’m not convinced this has much merit, especially in the internet age and with the ready access to advisory services. Few farmers could claim ignorance about health and safety practices on farms, yet we still have too many farm incidents and tragedies.

It’s more likely that we’re understating or don’t appreciate the full costs of adoption of the technologies that we champion. Effective grazing management, for instance, takes time to learn and then practice. Many farmers just won’t spend this time and may find it less time costly to use more concentrates instead. The same constraints may apply to the use of clover and liming.

Habit is also a very powerful factor that militates against change. Many farmers simply like having a bull and are reluctant to take up the spreadsheet instead.

A big factor that inhibits technology and practice change adoption is peer pressure. My sociological colleagues in Teagasc convinced me that many farmers won’t adopt a new technology – or at least not be among the first to do so – if it makes them stand out from other farmers and the subject of conversation.

Multiple actions

Some technologies and practices are also more complex than others to implement successfully. They may require multiple actions and the use of several different inputs as part of an overall system. Others, and the ones that are likely to more readily adopted, are embodied in a single input. Acquire that input and you get the benefit (eg, animal medicines and machinery).

Difficult as it is to understand why many farmers are reluctant to adopt technologies that make them money, there’s an even bigger conundrum when the adoption of a technology confers no financial benefit on a farmer but does benefit society.

Most of the breakthrough measures to address climate change fall into this category, eg, feed additives and slurry management. There’s a key policy lesson here. Farmers simply won’t adopt these technologies without State support.