Willingness to Pay Behaviour of Farmers to Access Agricultural Advices through ICT Enabled Participatory Agricultural Extension Model in India

The ICT-enabled extension approach called ‘e-Velanmai’ (means, e-agriculture) has been pilot tested in three irrigation project command areas and upscaled in Tamil Nadu. ICT tools are handled by field coordinators to send images of crop status to the scientists for accessing timely advice. The study has reported that farmers are willing to pay for availing ICT-based agricultural extension services from the agricultural experts based on their farm size. The turnaround time of dissemination is 1- 3 hours in a day. The advices helped the farmers to improve their farm profit by 2102/acre (tomato), 3101/acre (coconut) by achieving higher efficiency in the use of inputs. Presently, 4556 farmers have become members by paying the total membership fee of 283300. About 10,797 advices were given to these farmers. The ‘e-agriculture’ has facilitated participatory, quality and timely extension services to promote scientific farming and improve the livelihood status of farmers in the region.