CONSTRAINTS FACED BY FARMERS IN USING ICT IN AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES

Abstract

The purposes of the study were to determine and describe the farmer’s profile characteristics namely: age, level of education, family size, annual income, farming experience, ICT training, use of ICTs in agricultural activities and frequency of use of ICT enablers and the constraints faced by farmers in using ICT in using in agricultural activities; to determine the constraints faced by the farmers in using ICT in agricultural activities and to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics of the farmers and their constraints of using ICT in agricultural activities. Data were collected from 102 randomly selected farmers (out of 510) of Chirirbandar Upazila of Dinajpur district from the farmers were directly or indirectly involved with Agriculture Information and Communication Centers (AICCs) of Department of Agricultural extension (DAE). A pre-tested and structured interview schedule was used to collect data from the farmers during the period of 10 April to 10 may, 2018. The constraints faced by the farmers in using ICT in agricultural activates was the focus issue of this study. A four-point rating scale was used to determine the focus variable such as very high, high, less and not at all with a score of 3, 2, 1, and 0, respectively. The scale contained 12 constraint items of the farmers. The constraints score was computed for each of the respondents by adding together all the scores obtained by for all of the constraint items. It was found that (59.80 percent) of the farmers had medium constraints as compared to (21.57 percent) had high constraints and (18.63 percent) had low constraints faced in using ICT in agricultural activities. Constraints Facing Index (CFI) for all the 12 constraints items ranged from 109.8 to 228.2 (against possible range from 0 to 306). Among the total 12 constraints “high cost of ICT enablers (CFI=228.2)” is the top most ranked constraint CFI and “not enough time to spend on ICT use (CFI=109.8)” had the last position of the rank. The correlation test was used to determine the relationships between the focus issue and the selected characteristics. Among the eight selected characteristics, the farmers’ level of education, annual family income, ICT training, use of ICTs in agricultural activities and frequency of ICT use showed significantly negative relationship with constraints in using ICTs. On the other hand, age, family size farming experience did not show any significant relationship with their constraints in using ICT