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The Iowa Study of Hybrid Seed Corn: The Adoption of Innovation

15 January, 2016 - 09:14

As noted above, the hybrid seed corn had many advantages compared to traditional seed, such as the hybrid seed's vigor and resistance to drought and disease. However, there were some barriers to prevent Iowa farmers from adopting the hybrid seed corn. One problem was that the hybrid seed corn could not reproduce (p. 122). This meant that the hybrid seed was relatively expensive for Iowa farmers, especially at the time of the Depression. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that, despite the economic profit that the hybrid seed corn brought, its high price made a adoption among Iowa farmers remain slow.

According to Lowery and DeFleur (1995), Ryan and Gross sought to explain how the hybrid seed corn came to attention and which of two channels (i.e., mass communication and interpersonal communication with peers) led farmers to adopt the new innovation. They found that each channel has different functions. Mass communication functioned as the source of initial information, while interpersonal networks functioned as the influence over the farmers’ decisions to adopt (p. 125). One of the most important findings in this study is that the adoption of innovation depends on some combination of well-established interpersonal ties and habitual exposure to mass communication (p. 127). Ryan and Gross also found that the rate of adoption of hybrid seed corn followed an S-shaped curve, and that there were four different types of adopters. According to Rogers (1995), Ryan and Gross also made a contribution by identifying the five major stages in the adoption process, which were awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. After Ryan and Gross’s hybrid corn study, about 5,000 papers about diffusion were published in 1994 (Rogers, 1995).