Farmers’ use of mobile phone for accessing agricultural information in Pakistan:

Abstract

Agriculture is considered as the main driving force in Pakistan’s economy employing 45% of the country’s labor force and generating 20% of national GDP Agriculture sector of Pakistan is facing numerous challenges including non-adoption of agricultural technology at the farm level, due to farmers’ lack of access to the latest information. In this context, the current study focusses on the use of the mobile phone in accessing agricultural information among the farmers of the of district Muzaffargarh,Punjab, Pakistan. A multistage sampling technique was used to collect data from the two tehsils (cities/sub-districts) of Muzaffargarh formulating a total sample of 180 farmers. SPSS computer-based Software was used for analyzing the data. Results revealed that 91.2% of the farmers indicated mobile phone ownership. It was further reported that 87.20 % of the farmers used private sectors advisory staff to obtain agriculture information. Market information was ranked as the highest accessed information among the rest of farm-related use. Easy access to updated information and connectivity with stakeholders were reported as the highest perceived benefits of mobile phone use (4.63 & 4.72 mean). Findings reported that farmers’ limited aptitude of Mobile phone usage and lack of awareness of information sources as major constraints in farm-related use of the Mobile phone. On the basis of findings, the current study provided recommendations and policy implications for utilizing the true potential of these ICT-enabled solutions in agriculture.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Picture-Based Agricultural Extension Lessons Developed Using Participatory Testing and Editing with Smallholder Women Farmers in Nepal

“…These results are consistent with the findings from the systematic review on the use of ICTs in rural areas by Salemink et al [20]. Combined with their high cost, many advanced ICTs are thus irrelevant for many smallholders [19,22]. By contrast, a few respondents mentioned that printed pictures are low cost unlike video or radio and do not rely on the availability of electricity once printed.…”

“…It is not possible to know if the use of the picture-based lessons will influence the adoption of the proposed innovations in the short or long term. Much of the relevant extension literature and even the stakeholders' perspective insist that printed pictures are only useful as training materials in direct communication with an agricultural extension officer, without which it is much less helpful [8,19,22,30]. However, from the perspective of the smallholder farmers in this study, the findings indicate that there was no significant difference in comprehension with or without an extension officer or trainer (Figure 8).…”

“…The male and female farmers' perceptions about the usefulness of the printed picture lessons and their attitudes towards using them in the future are summarized here. In the literature, there is skepticism about the utility of printed picture lessons compared to "innovative" ICTs, such as smartphones [17,20,22]. In terms of different ICT options, here, 93 percent of control farmers and 75 percent of test farmers selected picture lessons as one of their top three means of agricultural communication, on par with radio or combined TV sources, and much higher than mobile phones ( Figure 7).…”

“…Most of the local stakeholders in Nepal and the current literature, which often influences the training of agricultural stakeholders, such as extension workers, have a generally positive attitude towards advanced ICTs, such as smartphones, compared to traditional means of communication, such as printed picture lessons [10,19,21,22,55]. Contradictory to their view, here the findings from the farmers that participated in this study showed a positive attitude towards printed pictures as extension materials even though such methods tend to represent an older era of ICTs (Figure 7).…”

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

“…Despite having climate change policy and action plans at federal and provincial level 11 , still, the current institutional frameworks are not aligned with support to approve such policies and plans 12 . Similarly, advisory and financial services provided by various public entities are not updated with the latest knowledge of climate change and hence often fail to support farmers’ adaptation needs 6 , 13 .…”