The government of Bangladesh established Agricultural Information and Communication Centre (AICC) to communicate with mass farmers quickly. This paper aimed at analyzing the direct and indirect effects of farmers selected characteristics on the effectiveness of AICC in disseminating agricultural information and identifying problem faced by the farmers in getting service from AICC and probable suggestions to overcome identified problems. Data were collected from randomly selected 90 farmers of Faridpur district, Bangladesh using a pre-tested interview schedule. Path analysis was applied to assess the direct and indirect effects of farmers’ selected characteristics on the effectiveness of AICC. On the other hand, Problem Faced Index (PFI) and Frequency of response was used to identify problem and suggestions. The analysis showed that farmers’ use of ICT had the highest direct effect (0.345) in the positive direction followed by ICT using experience (0.245) and ICT using confidence (0.237) on the effectiveness of AICC. The other variables have direct and indirect effects were ICT using confidence and ICT using experience.  Limited availability of ICT tools and technology in AICC were most severe problem followed by technical problems of different ICT based media in AICC and low bandwidth speed of internet. The study provided suggestions to increase the efficiency of the AICC in communicating agricultural information.

Nowadays, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are playing important role in communicating agricultural information. In this connection, the government of Bangladesh established a number of Agricultural Information and Communication Centers (AICC) at the Union level to disseminate agricultural information. The purposes of the study were to determine the effectiveness of AICC for disseminating agricultural information and to explore the contribution of the selected characteristics of the AICC member farmers to the effectiveness of AICC. Data were collected from 90 randomly selected farmers of nine Upazillas of Faridpur district under Dhaka division. Face-to-face interview followed by pretested structured questionnaire was held with the selected farmers to gather data. The survey revealed that an overwhelming majority (80%) of the farmers perceived medium effectiveness of AICC, while 7.8% of them perceived low and 12.2% of them perceived high effectiveness of AICC for disseminating agricultural information. The effectiveness of AICC was influenced by the intensity of use of ICT, length of experience to use ICT and ICT using confidence. Therefore, responsible organizations such as Agriculture Information Service (AIS) with the help of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and other advisory service-providing organizations should take action to enhance the effectiveness of AICC. Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2022: 259-265