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Abstract
Adoption research for many years has considered individual farmer as the basis of analysis,
whereas, the effect of networks governing a farmer’s decision-making has received limited attention.
Moreover, the spread of technology over different generation of adopters has not been addressed
adequately. Hence, farmers’ position within the agricultural information networks and their adoption
decision, may be studied to formulate some lower order propositions regarding the diffusion of agricultural
innovations within social networks. The present study was conducted at Nadia District of West Bengal,
India to study the spread of banana (Musa paradisiacal L.) and guava (Psidium guajava L.) cultivation
among the farmers of selected villages. Case study method and focused group discussion was used to track
this spread over different generations of adopters. Sociometric technique was employed to find out the
network score of farmers in the agricultural information network. The fractional ranking of network scores
of farmers was then compared with their relative earliness in the spread of banana and guava cultivation.
It was found that both in the spread of banana and guava cultivation, most of the farmers who had higher
network scores were earlier adopters of banana and guava cultivation practices and vice versa. This
indicates the possible relations between farmers’ adoption-decision regarding new crops and their position
in social networks.