What drives or inhibits farmers in their decisions about adopting new farming practices? Many literature reviews have been published to summarise the wealth of research papers on this topic. This post provides a list of the literature review papers I know of and I make some general comments about the literature and the reviews. 

Research on adoption of new practices by farmers started in the U.S. in the 1950s, with studies by economists and sociologists looking at the uptake of hybrid corn (e.g. Griliches, 1957). Since then, thousands of studies have been conducted looking at farmers in almost every country and at every conceivable type of farming practice.

When a body of research literature gets big enough, sooner or later someone prepares a literature review to summarise the findings. The better reviews create a synthesis of the knowledge that can help future researchers prioritise what they should do. The synthesis may help subsequent researchers identify unresolved questions, areas with conflicting evidence, or issues where the research so far has been poorly conducted, for example.

Large, active areas of research can end up with more than one literature review. It may be that someone thinks an existing review was not done very well, or that it missed important literature, or that enough time has passed with new research being published so that an update is needed.

When I first started doing research on adoption of new farming practices in the 1990s, there were already several reviews on the topic available. Since then, there has been a steady flow of new reviews. In fact, I’m not aware of any other agricultural research issue for which so many literature reviews have been published.

Recently there have been some meta-analyses and systematic reviews on the issue. These are more structured, systematic approaches to conducting a literature review than the earlier relatively free-ranging reviews. They involve drawing conclusions from the literature in a relatively systematic way. While that’s good, my favourites amongst the existing reviews are some of the more free-ranging ones.

There are 20 reviews or meta-analyses in my current list. Of these, nine have been published since 2020. I wonder whether COVID lockdowns were an impetus for preparing at least some of these recent ones.

Here is my current list.

• Lindner, R.K. (1987). Adoption and diffusion of technology: an overview. In: Technological Change in Postharvest Handling and Transportation of Grains in the Humid Tropics’. (Eds. B.R. Champ, E. Highlegy, J.V. Remenyi) pp. 144-151. (ACIAR Proceedings No. 19, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research: Canberra).
• Feder, G., Umali, D. (1993). The adoption of agricultural innovations: a review. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 43, 215-239.
• Guerin, L.J. and Guerin, T.F. (1994). Constraints to the adoption of innovations in agricultural research and environmental management: a review. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 34, 549-571.
• Pannell, D., Marshall, G., Barr, N., Curtis, A., Vanclay, F., Wilkinson, R., 2006. Understanding and promoting adoption of conservation technologies by rural landholders. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 46, 1407-1424.
• Knowler, D., Bradshaw, B., 2007. Farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture: a review and synthesis of recent research. Food Policy 32, 25-48.
• Pike, T. 2008. “Understanding Behaviours in a Farming Context: Bringing Theoretical and Applied Evidence Together from across DEFRA and Highlighting Policy Relevance and Implications for Future Research.” DEFRA Agricultural Change and Environment Observatory Discussion Paper, November: 1–29.
• Prokopy, L.S., K. Floress, D. Klotthor-Weinkauf, and A. Baumgart-Getz. 2008. Determinants of Agricultural Best Management Practice Adoption: Evidence from the Literature. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 63(5): 300–311.
• Kafle, B. (2010). Determinants of adoption of improved maize varieties in developing countries: A review. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 1(1), 1-7.
• Baumgart-Getz, A., Stalker Prokopy, L., Floress, K., 2012. Why farmers adopt best management practice in the United States: a meta-analysis of the adoption literature. Journal of Environmental Management 96 (1), 17–25.
• Mwangi, M., and Kariuki, S. (2015). Factors determining adoption of new agricultural technology by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development, 6(5), 208–216.
• Montes De Oca Munguia, O., and R. Llewellyn. 2020. The Adopters Versus the Technology: Which Matters More When Predicting or Explaining Adoption. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 42(1): 80–91.
• Takahashi, K., Muraoka, R., and Otsuka, K. (2020). Technology adoption, impact, and extension in developing countries’ agriculture: A review of the recent literature. Agricultural Economics 51(1), 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12539
• Yokamo, S. (2020). Adoption of improved agricultural technologies in developing countries: Literature review. International Journal of Food Science and Agriculture 4(2), 183–190.
• Montes de Oca Munguia, O., Pannell, D.J. and Llewellyn, R. (2021). Understanding the adoption of innovations in agriculture: A review of selected conceptual models, Agronomy 11, 139. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11010139.
• Rosário, J., Madureira, L., Marques, C. and Silva, R. (2022). Understanding Farmers’ Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture Innovations: A Systematic Literature Review, Agronomy 12, 2879.
• Junyu Lu et al. (2022). A meta-analysis of agricultural conservation intentions, behaviors, and practices: Insights from 35 years of quantitative literature in the United States. Journal of Environmental Management 323: 116240.
• Arslan A, Floress K, Lamanna C, Lipper L, Rosenstock TS (2022) A meta-analysis of the adoption of agricultural technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation 1(7): e0000018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000018.
• Pronti, A., Auci, S., Berbel, J. (2024).  Water conservation and saving technologies for irrigation. A structured literature review of econometric studies on the determinants of adoption, Agricultural Water Management 299, 108838.
• Möhring, N., Muller, A, and Schaub, S. (2024). Farmers’ adoption of organic agriculture-a systematic global literature review, European Review of Agricultural Economics DOI 10.1093/erae/jbae025
• Wokibula, R.A., Dentzman, K., Akitwine, F., Mtama, J.G., Mbeiza, M., and Burras, C.L. (2025). Factors That Affect the Adoption of Fertilizer Among Cocoa Farmers in Developing Countries: A Review, Global Challenges DOI: 10.1002/gch2.202400175

It really is a remarkably long list. I don’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions that these authors put forward. For example, there is a tendency for some of them to say that the results of the research are somewhat random and inconsistent and we don’t know what drives adoption. In my view, that’s a result of inconsistent definitions of variables and poorly conducted research (e.g., omission of key variables). If you account for that and focus on good-quality research, I reckon the sorts of general conclusions we summarise in Pannell et al. (2006) stand up strongly.

Another common weakness in the reviews is that many fail to recognise and account for a common weakness in the published research, which is that there is a strong emphasis on the people side of the equation and a neglect of the practice or innovation itself. A lot of the research by non-economists, and some economists, falls into this trap, as shown by Montes and Llewellyn (2020). I think it’s a serious error.

The list has grown so much and so quickly that many researchers within the field are probably unaware of some of these reviews, hence my decision to list them all here. No doubt there are others that I’ve missed and there will continue to be new ones coming out. If you are aware of any I have missed, please let me know in a comment below and I’ll expand the list.

While I’m here, I’ll list a few other papers that I think might be useful to researchers on agricultural adoption.

A conceptual framework of the adoption process

Abadi Ghadim AK, Pannell DJ (1999) A conceptual framework of adoption of an agricultural innovation. Agricultural Economics 21, 145-154.

The ADOPT model for predicting agricultural adoption

Kuehne, G., R. Llewellyn, D.J. Pannell, R. Wilkinson, P. Dolling, J. Ouzman, and M. Ewing. 2017. Predicting Farmer Uptake of New Agricultural Practices: A Tool for Research, Extension and Policy. Agricultural Systems 156: 115–125.

https://adopt.csiro.au/

My edited book on the subject

Pannell, D.J. and Vanclay, F.M. (eds) (2011). Changing Land Management: Adoption of New Practices by Rural Landholders, CSIRO Publishing, Canberra.

330. Adoption of agricultural innovations Special Issue

A recent journal special issue on the topic

330. Adoption of agricultural innovations Special Issue

A novel way of looking at adoption pathways

Montes de Oca Munguia, O., Pannell, D.J., Llewellyn, R. and Stahlmann-Brown, P. (2021). Adoption pathway analysis: Representing the dynamics and diversity of adoption for agricultural practices, Agricultural Systems 191, 103173.

Cited literature

Griliches Z (1957) Hybrid corn: an exploration in the economics of technological change. Econometrica 25, 501-523.