THE BENEFIT OF MOBILE PHONE USE IN COMMUNICATING AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION TO FARMERS IN ETCHE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, RIVERS STATE

Abstract

The study was to assess the benefit of mobile phone use in communicating Agricultural information to farmers in Etchc Local Government Area of Rivers State. The study arose from the fact that, while information is becoming an important ingredient in Agriculture, farmers in Etche lack access to Agricultural information some time which greatly constraint effort to improve Agricultural development. Specifically, describe the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers in the study area, ascertain the awareness of mobile phone use for agricultural information in the study area, examine the area of mobile phone to communicate agricultural information in the study area, identify the benefit of mobile phone use to communicate agricultural information in the study area and identify the constraint associated with the use of mobile phone in the study area. One null hypothesis was also formulated to test the relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers and the benefit of mobile phone use in communicating agricultural information to farmer. Purposive random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 144 farmers. The collected data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The results of the study showed that 41.67% of the farmers are between the ages of 20-30 years, 28.47% had primary education, 47.92% are married, 36.8% had farming experiences between 11-20 years and 41.67% had monthly income of N21000-N30000.  On the level of mobile phone awareness, 40.0% of the farmers strongly agreed that Mobile phone helps them to get agricultural information that will increase productivity or yield. Majority of the farmers are involved in mixed farming. However, major constraints faced by farmers include inadequate or poor infrastructure (x=2.65), poor network signal (x=2.69) and high cost of mobile phone and running (x=2.84). The hypothesis was tested using correlation analysis, the results reveals the following age (r=0.041); p˂0.05), the educational qualification (r=0.01; p˂0.05), marital status (r=0.602; p˂0.05), occupation (r=0.045; p˂0.05) and household size (r=0.18; p˂0.05) which shows there was significant relationship between role of mobile phone use and socio economic characteristics of the farmers as the coefficient of the correlation(R) was 0.896 indicating 89.6% of strength relationship between the variable. Based on the findings of the study, some recommendations are given that extension agents should be used to create more awareness on mobile phone use among the farming communities, identify barriers preventing farmers to use new information sources and to educate them on the use of modern agricultural information as source of improving their productivity.