Accessibility and Extent of Utilization of Information and Communication Technologies in Adoption of Improved Agricultural Practices by Farmers In Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh

Information and communication have always mattered in agriculture, which accounted for 13.9% of the GDP in 2013–14, 54.6% of the total workforce. Providing knowledge can be challenging, however, because the highly localized nature of agriculture means that information must be tailored specifically to distinct conditions. As ICT is a potential solution, a Descriptive research design was conducted, majority of the respondents were middle aged with education up to middle schooling and possess small land holdings with high farming experience. Most of the respondents had medium information seeking behavior, socio-politico participation, and extension contact. A majority also had medium level of economic status, scientific orientation, achievement motivation and innovativeness. Majority had medium accessibility (70.83%) to ICT's and only 9.17 per cent had high accessibility. 71.67 per cent respondents belonged to medium category of extent of ICTs utilization. 65.83 per cent come under medium level of extent of adoption and 15.83 per cent had high level of adoption. Eight out of thirteen independent variables viz., education, socio-political participation, extension contact, economic status, accessibility of ICT's, extent of ICT's utilization, achievement motivation, innovativeness, Information seeking behavior are significant. Variables such as age, land holding, farming experience and scientific orientation did not show any significant relationship with level of adoption. The most important constraints reported by the farmers in utilization of the ICT tools were low accessibility and awareness of all the ICT tools within the farming community, No repetition of the important programmes, timings of broadcast are not suitable to farmers.