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Type : Other Article

Expectations of the Farmers from ICT in Agriculture

Nikulsinh M. Chauhan

Abstract

Amongst the various means of information communication, satellite based internet communication are very efficient, accurate, quick and cheaper in the field of disseminating the information from research system to farmers. Internet communication has touched almost all the districts in our country and is mainly down up to the village levels. Internet offers a means for bridging the gap between developmental professional, rural people and agricultural producers through the initiation of interaction and dialogue. Keeping all the views in mind ,it was decided to study the expectations and opinion of the farmers regarding internet facility with the following specific objectives 1) to study the expectations and opinion of the farmers towards internet facility and 2) to ascertain the relationship between personal profile and opinion of the farmers towards internet facility. Farmers were expecting six sets of computer with agriculture graduate having computer knowledge as operator at CIC. It was also expected that Government should bear expenses to run CIC. The information on farmers’ related sites was expected by most of the farmers in Gujarati language that too in the audio-visual form. The major purpose to have CIC explained by the respondents were to collect information on agriculture , government’s programmes, and market prices. Majority of the respondents expressed their desire to use Internet daily or twice in a week by their own .All of them expressed positive response to have proper training about the use of Internet facility through government agency, at CIC. The results showed that majority of the farmers understood that internet is a rich source to collect world wide information on agriculture and it is the fastest way to exchange information in shortest time’. Majority farmers completely or to a certain degree felt that though internet is costly affair for the farmers but it is the best mean to collect information on market prices of agricultural products. 82.00 percent of the farmers were wishing their children to make positive use of internet at the same time 81.00 per cent of them had opinion that farmers should make use of internet. It can be concluded from the results that out of the 10 independent variables, five variables like Education, Land holding, Contact with NRI’s, Experience of internet use and Mass media exposure are significantly and positively correlated with the opinion of the farmers about the use of Internet for farming community. More than 70 per cent of the farmers opined that internet is the rich source and fastest way of exchanging information in short time. It must be use by the farming community for their betterment

Keyword: Information communication

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