Assessment of Mobile Advisory Services for Improving Agricultural Livelihood of Farmers in Tribal Dominated District of Madhya Pradesh

Mobile phone based information and communication technologies help to reduce the risks and uncertainties, emerging challenges in agriculture and provides instant solutions, timely market information and improve livelihood and also helps to overcome information asymmetry existing among the group of farmers. In this context, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dhar started timely and need based systematic bulk text message as Kisan Mobile Advisory (KMA) during the year 2011–12 to 2015–16 and registered 26500 mobile holder farmers for sending information in hindi language through short messages (SMS) twice a week on agriculture and allied fields. The study revealed that messages delivered in hindi language were highly understandable to majority of users (83.6%), the expectations of the respondents towards frequencies of messages delivered suggested daily to twice a week (72%) and majority of farmers (97.1%) conveyed the text message to other farmers in their social system. It was also observed that socio-economic profile of the farmers also play an important role in adoption and usefulness of technology dissemination. The analysis showed that majority of medium category farmers (70.67%) having higher level of education found the need based information most useful followed by large farmers (60.32%). The farming community engaged in enterprise such as agriculture + horticulture + dairy found usefulness of information (88.43) followed by agriculture + dairy and horticulture + dairy. In the same way the knowledge level of information of KMA registered farmers was higher than the non-registered. The overall high impact of of messages through KMA services was reported by 71.7 per cent farmers during the study.