ICTs FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: A STUDY IN BAGALKOT DISTRICT OF KARNATAKA STATE, INDIA

Information is one of the key inputs in agriculture. Providing agricultural information to farmers is primarily vested with the government agencies and is also carried out by private agri-business companies and NGOs. Among the different types of communications/medias accessible for transfer of agricultural information mobile, TV, radio, newspaper, fixed phone and internet are prime ones. In the study, ownership pattern of media reveals that 91.9 per cent of the farmers owned TV connection followed by mobile phone (77.9%) and seems to have decisively edged out radio (26.7%). Though, radio was owned by 26.7 per cent of farmers, but was rarely used. Ownership of newspapers was limited to 7 per cent of farmers, but most of the farmers opined that reading newspapers at the village grocery store or tea shop. Fixed line phones were confined to 3.5 per cent of farm holds. Farmers received agricultural information from a wide range of sources such as District/block level agriculture/horticulture offices, Krishi Vigyan Kendra’s, daily local language newspapers, agri portals, television, friends and relatives, helpline, farmers’ cooperatives, radio, private input agencies and dealers and mobile phones. Among these, most farmers (61.6%) approached private input dealers followed by Friends, neighbors and relatives (50%) and were also important and reliable sources of information. Despite several constraints, 46.5 per cent of farmers getting information from government agencies, 15 per cent are in touch with Krishi Vigyan Kendra’s, 10.5 per cent accessing information from extension activities, 7.0 per cent from newspapers, 4.7 per cent from magazines and only 3.5 per cent of the farmers reported using TV for seeking agricultural information despite high ownership and regular broadcast of agriculture programs. Few farmers (1.2%) were dependent on helplines. Among new ICTs, mobile phones were widely available in the study area but were mostly being used for post sale inquiry rather than information for increasing production efficiency.