Data about the sales of corn seeds in Iowa was studied by sociologists and economists concerning "risk perception" and "behavior modification", to come up with a theory about early, slow, and "late-adopters" of technological innovations. Those studies also tried to describe as well as generalize predictions about how a new discovery or an invention, can become prevalent in global human societies.
Now, among adoption curves of technology, the adoption of cigarette smoking has been tragically rapid and widespread throughout the planet. Also, rapid adoption of e-cigarettes, particularly among teenagers in various countries, isn't somehow a good thing that has reduced the healthcare costs to tax-payers within those countries, in dealing with the terrible consequences of innovations like cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Those types of innovations have only served to increase the global profits amassed by a number of predatory, multi-national corporations that find it morally convenient, to pay off government regulators for promoting public-health policies in favor of things like alcohol, tobacco, and firearms sales; only to then easily target and sap susceptible populations of children and teenagers, particularly in developing countries, via clever multi-media marketing.
So, what kinds of technology adoption curves do we get to see in public infrastructure projects for water desalination and sewage treatment plants? The adoption of appropriately functional water treatment plants has remained pathetic, across the world, and even in Iowa, compared to:
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adoption of certain types of corn seeds by farmers in Americas, and,
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the proliferation rate of drone based warfare across the world.
Likewise, let us consider the prevalence of Intrauterine Device (IUD) usage for birth-control, among different populations across the world? Ah yes, that adoption curve has hopelessly flat-lined, even in countries like the US, Canada, and the UK due to interference from certain political and religious organizations, against individual reproductive rights and also against basic human rights to legitimate education about customized healthcare.
As you can clearly see, rapid adoption of things like cigarettes, and the lack of adoption of water treatment plants or of IUD among various populations across the world, isn't at all like the adoption of corn seeds among certain groups of farmers in Mid-West America, nor is it like the prevalence of alcohol and firearms sales throughout the world. This is mostly because:
while sales of corn seeds, as a category, already has a convenient uni-modal bell-curved probability distribution, with simple calculations for mean and median statistics because of practically no variance within the variance of that type of data, things like construction of water treatment plants and IUD usage have multi-modal probability distribution with greater stochasticity and volatility, especially due to complex forms of variance within the variance of those types of data.
Moreover, there has never been a ruthless company like Monsanto promoting IUD sales through large-scale international bribes and lobbying. Marketing and sales of things like IUD are especially not conducted by healthcare companies or the World Health Organization, the way Monsanto has and continues to promote its highly subsidized, genetically modified corn seeds, which can be purchased duty-free and "on consignment" by American farmers. Nor has there ever been any type of sectarian groups, interfering with the information that can reach farmers about corn seeds, the way rigorous campaigns are driven throughout Americas by religious and political organizations, to prevent scientific information about things like IUD from reaching end-consumers.
Trying to generalize and rationalize, banal socio-economic and political studies theories with cherry-picked data from Iowa, to forcibly apply those Neo-liberal capitalist theories to cultural norms and public-policies pertaining to countries in the rest of the world, especially against the best interests of countries in South and Central America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia, is simply wrong and unconscionably ignorant.