Farmers’ use of mobile phone-based farm advisory services in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

The agriculture sector in Pakistan faces enormous challenges of lack of farm knowledge adoption due to the farmers’ lack of access to the latest information. Recently various mobile phone-based farm advisory services (FAS) have been introduced as an alternative to the conventional extension methods. Despite many ICT initiatives, the performance of these projects remains unsatisfactory. The current study was designed to identify these FAS, farmers’ extent of use, and factors associated with their adoption. Two hundred and forty farmers were surveyed in the rural areas of district Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed with SPSS software. Findings revealed that 77.08% of the sampled farmers were using mobile-based FAS. Telecom and private sector FAS were reported to have the highest share of users (37.08% and 25.83% respectively). Results of the logistic regression showed that farmers’ educational level, mobile use skills, mobile possession duration and the number of mobile phones in a family were found positively significant, while farmers’ age and contact with extension agents were negatively significant. The findings conclude that education and digital literacy are essential for the use of mobile-based alternatives and emphasize the need for training and educating the farmers.

An empirical analysis of the use of agricultural mobile applications among smallholder farmers in Myanmar

“…Roy, Chandra, Mukherjee, Jethi, and Joshi (2018) suggested that older farmers tend to follow traditional knowledge and beliefs and do not rely on new ICTs. These results are consistent with Khan et al (2020) and Rose, Sutherland, Parker, Lobley, Winter, Morris, … Dicks (2016) who also found a negative relationship between age and use of mobile tools.…”

“…These results are consistent with Khan et al (2020) and Rose, Sutherland, Parker, Lobley, Winter, Morris, … Dicks (2016) who also found a negative relationship between age and use of mobile tools.…”

“…Binary and Multinomial Choice Models have been used to measure the adoption of technologies among farming communities (Khan, Qijie, Sertse, Nabi, & Khan, 2020; Mittal, Gandhi, & Tripathi, 2010; Rahman & Fadol, 2013). In this study, the Probit regression model (Greene, 2003) was employed to consider factors relating to adoption of agricultural mobile apps.…”

“…Factors influencing the use and adoption of mobile phones for agricultural information dissemination have been widely studied (Aldosari et al, 2017; Khan et al, 2020; Obong et al, 2018). In the absence of significant studies directly looking into the factors affecting mobile apps, we used mobile phones as a proxy to use apps.…”

Public institutions’ capacities regarding climate change adaptation and risk management support in agriculture: the case of Punjab Province, Pakistan

“…Punjab contributes more than half of the country's agricultural GDP by producing over 70% of the country's total cereal yield 5 . The majority of the population still lives in rural areas and heavily relies on the agriculture sector for their subsistence 22 . In recent years, food security and livelihood of the rural population are under risk due to the negative impacts of extreme climatic events on crops in the province 1,3 .…”