Use of Information and Communication Technology in Agriculture by Farmers of District Kapurthala

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are now seen as an important tool for development in agriculture. These can play a big role in pushing the agriculture development in Punjab beyond the plateau on which it seems to stuck during last few years. In a study conducted in district Kapurthala, it was emphasised to numerate the availability of such ICT tools with the farmers and their use in agriculture. This study was conducted using sample survey method and farmers were interviewed to collect data. It was found that 41 per cent farmers had landline phone but only 47 per cent of them used it for agriculture purposes. Similarly, 98 per cent farmers possessed television set but only 49 per cent of them used for watching the agriculture related programs. The mobile phone ownership among farmers was more than 98 per cent which are mostly used by them as a social communication tool, whereas, 78 per cent of farmers said that once in while they use their mobile phone for agriculture advisory liking calling agriculture departments or relatives or commission agents to enquire about the rate of produce. Mobile phones were found to be the most powerful means of communication among farmers for exchanging agriculture information. This was probably due to cost affordability, better network, easy availability and cheap tariff rates. Further, the farmers were observed to be dependent on their large social network and took advice from the agricultural scientists, fellow farmers, relatives, commission agents, pesticide dealers and friends. Interestingly, most of the farmers showed their inability to use the agro-advisory received through short message service (SMS) as they were not able to read those SMS. Eighty nine per cent households subscribe to newspaper and read it regularly but were of the view that the information in newspaper related to agriculture and its subsidiary fields is limited. The radio has far less popularity among the farming community. The various other factors which affected the use of such tools in agriculture were age of the farmer, size of the land holding, educational qualification and the cropping system.