Is the Innovator Dead?

LC Paul, University of Saskatchewan

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Abstract

Paul challenges the principle that all farmers in a community learn and adopt from a single innovator. Extension "...must get closer to the operating farmers as a whole." Successful farmers have no intention of sharing their information and techniques. What should Extension's role be when working with the less productive farmers: (1) to improve their efficiency or (2) to consider them as socioeconomic problems and handle them by trying to get them to move off the farms, by carrying them as a subsistance level, or by ignoring them?