This paper analyzes the amount of time required by farmers in four villages on the western edge of the central plain of Thailand to adopt four agricultural innovations--fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide. The general objective is to help researchers interested in the relationship of the adoption of new ideas to economic development understand the process of passing from awareness to adoption. A more specific objective is to check on the cross cultural validity of work done by researchers in the United States on the adoption period. General findings of past research regarding the temporal context of decision making indicate that (1) awareness occurs at a more rapid rate than adoption; (2) the time required for early adopters to complete the initial stages of the innovation adoption process is shorter than for later adopters; (3) the later stages require more time for earlier adopters than later adopters because innovators are creating the precedent for later adopters; (4) the inability of potential adopters to acquire innovation frequently delays the time of adoption; (5) and the first individuals to adopt innovations require a shorter overall adoption period than do relatively later adopters. Findings from analysis of data on the Thai farmers did not support these findings. The conclusion is that access to sources who possess the knowledge necessary to evaluate new technology may more accurately explain the rate at which innovations are adopted than intrapersonal differences of early and later adopters. The implication is that researchers should re-evaluate their thinking about the proposition that lack of knowledge does not delay adoption. (Author/DB)