|
By Lisa Caines
When it comes to advice about technology, beef farmers turn to
veterinarians and other producers first.
University of Guelph professors Wayne Howard, Dave Sparling, and Alfons
Weersink, along with graduate student Alessandro Alasia, Department of
Agricultural Economics and Business, have found that recommendations
from trusted associates and friends are still the most effective tool to
prompt beef producers to make purchases.
The team headed a survey of more than 1,300 Ontario beef farmers, who
mostly considered themselves mid-to-late adopters of new technologies.
"Farmers who adopt new technology early are important, because you need
people who can prove that the technologies work," says Sparling. "Early
adopters tend to adopt because they want to be head of the pack, and
they are often willing to take risks. When they do adapt new technology,
the next task is to collect useful information and get it out to the
rest of the farmers."
The kind of information that farmers look for most is whether a
technology will reduce their costs, and whether it will work in Ontario.
And it seems the information they value comes from select peers and
voices of authority. Veterinarians (77 per cent ) and other producers
(66 per cent) rated highest as sources of the most valuable information.
Less than half of the farmers questioned cited government extension
workers and commodity groups as sources of reliable information on new
technologies. The print media, and industry publications, were also in
the middle of the pack, coming in at 50 and 52 per cent.
It’s an important time to be pinpointing where farmers are turning for
new technology information and what kind of information they need,
because more and more they need it to be competitive, says Sparling.
More than half of the farmers surveyed agreed that they needed to adopt
new technologies to survive and to become better farmers.
"One thing we hope will come out of this study is the development of
strategies that can be used for identifying new technologies and getting
them to early adopters for improved marketing, and for providing
information that people trust," he says. |
