Study on farmer participation and effectiveness of e- extension through the website raitamitra.kar.nic.in

Abstract

A number of e-extension programmes have been initiated in India in the past few years for providing digital access to farmers in modern farming technologies through the medium of internet. Raitamitra.nic.in is a prominent web portal operating in the State of Karnataka for orchestrating knowledge extension services and provisioning basic and applied information on various farming activities to the farming community. A comprehensive study was undertaken with the objective of finding out the extent of farmer participation in e-extension through the raitamitra website and various personal, socio-psychological and system factors associated with farmer participation in e-extension programme. The preference of farmers towards various formats of content presentation, information needs of the farmers and problems faced by farmers in using the website were also studied.

The study was conducted in Arsikere, Belur, Channarayapatna and Sakleshpura blocks of Hassan District in Karnataka State. A total of 120 farmers formed the sample size of the study. Extent of farmer participation in the website was the dependent variable for the study. The independent variables of the study were age, educational status, income, computer use efficiency, trainings undergone, cosmopoliteness, media exposure, awareness about ICT, attitude towards ICT and information source utilization.

Results of the study on the extent of farmer participation in the e-extension programme of the website raitamitra.nic.in revealed that almost half of the respondents had only low level of participation in the programme .Only nine percent of the farmers had high level of participation in the e-extension programme.

The results of correlation analysis revealed that nine personal and socio-psychological characteristics namely educational status, annual income .computer use efficiency, trainings undergone, cosmopoliteness ,media exposure ,awareness about ICT ,attitude towards ICT and information source utilization had positive and significant correlation with the extent of farmer participation in e-extension programme. The variable age exhibited a significant negative correlation with extent of farmer participation in e-extension programme.

Farmer participants perceived three system factors namely usefulness of information, location specificity of information and simplicity of the language as the most important system factors associated with higher levels of participation in the e-extension programme .The assessment of information needs of farmers revealed that marketing ,package of practices recommendations, input price and weather based advisory services were the most important areas in which the farmer participants required information. Slide shows, video and text plus picture were the most preferred formats of content presentation for the farmers.

Nearly two third of the farmers gained only low to medium level of knowledge from the website .Only 36.7 percent of the farmers gained high level of knowledge by participating in the e-extension programme of the web portal raitamitra.

Analysis of the problems faced by the farmer users of the website raitamitra.nic.in revealed that lack of awareness about website, problems in language, and lack of local relevance of information were the major constraints faced by the farmers in using the raitamitra website.