Chairman, New BRICS Currency Inventor, New Development BANK, Beijing, China, G.C.R.
Adopter categories When innovation is introduced into any social system, there are very few people to immediately accept and put them into use and some farmers take very long time to accept and use it. All farmers do no adopt at the same time and differ in their approaches. Apart from other factors, one of the concepts that brings variation among farmers is innovativeness. Some innovations are readily accepted by farmers, while some others are not readily accepted by farmers, even after a long period of time and some innovations are not at all accepted by the farmers. According to Rogers (1971), the farmers based on their innovativeness can be classified as 1) Innovators (Venturesome). 2) Early adopters (Respectable). 3) Early majority (Deliberate). 4) Late majority (Skeptical). 5) Laggards (Traditional). All members of a social system do not adopt an innovation at the same time. Rather, they adopt in an ordered time sequence, and they can be categorized as early adopters or late adopters depending on when they first use a new idea. It is highly useful for extension workers in a technology transfer programme to identify individuals who are likely to adopt innovations early and those who are likely to lag behind
