the innovation simply is "culturally unacceptable." Simultaneously,

outside observers may have their own reasons for being satisfied with

an answer of cultural unacceptability, and may fail to probe additional

factors.

 Research on extension systems does show that farmers who have

extensive contact with extension agents are more likely to adopt new

farming methods.1 Correlation, however, does not prove causation. The

larger market-oriented farmer can afford to be more innovative, and is

also more likely to seek extension services. The correlation between

extension contact and adoption sometimes is highest in cases where an
 2
innovation is not particularly profitable. In such cases some farmers

are willing to follow (for a brief period, at least) the advice of an

extension agent perhaps because he is an effective salesman, perhaps to

endear themselves to the extension agent and obtain more profitable

favors in the future. In at least one case, farmers with more extension

contact had lower yields, although the direction of causation is not clear.


 Everett Rogers, Joseph Ashcroft, and Niels Roling, Diffusion of
Innovations in Brazil, Nigeria, and India (East Lansing: Michigan State
University, 1970).
 2This has been demonstrated clearly with data on short-term
adoption rates of fertilizer in different regions of Ethiopia. Bisrat
Aklilu, "Technological Change in Subsistance Agriculture: The Adoption
and Diffusion of Fertilizer in Ethiopia's Minimum Package Areas,"
Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1976, pp. 233-234.

 David Leonard points out that extension agents and some farmers
can have patron-client relationships. The agent needs a farmer who will
try almost anything so that he can assure superiors that he is managing
to arrange some adoption. For the farmer, doing the favor of adopting
new techniques for the agent may assure access to credits, market infor-
mation, educational opportunities, etc. which may have long-term payoffs
far greater than the losses incurred due to unprofitable innovations.
 4Uma Lele, The Design of Rural Development, p. 71.