Effectiveness of SMS based Extension Advisories on Farmers Adoption Behaviour

Farming is the main occupation among rural communities of India. Nearly 50 per cent of the population depends only on agriculture for their livelihood. Indian agriculture is dominated by marginal and small farmers (Census, 2011) is highly challenged by lack of appropriate information at right time to maximize the productivity. In this regard, farmers demand information pertaining to weather, plant protection, market advisories, government schemes, subsidies etc. If these information were provided to the farmers at right time definitely it will enhance their growth and development in Agriculture (Mittal and Mamta, 2012).

The emerging concept of ICT & its application in extension can help the farming community to get accurate and timely information (Sidramappa et al., 2013). In the recent years, there is huge increase in mobile phone subscription among farmers. It is noticed that mobile phone industry is one of the emerging and fastest growing industry in India. The introduction of mobile phone has changed a lot in the field of information technology. Among different modern ICT tools, mobile phone has been considered as a widely accepted mode for transfer of agricultural technology not only in India but also in south Asian and African countries (Mittal and Mamta, 2012). With a mobile phone one can communicate the agricultural information through short message service (SMS) anywhere in the country. Mobile based SMS advisories in turn will help rural development and economic growth (Jayanthi and Asokhan, 2016).

The information service, called Reuters Market Light or RML, sends SMS to farmers with information on prices, weather forecasts, crop advice, and general news items. The price information is expected to improve farmer’s ability to negotiate with buyers and to enable them to arbitrage better across space (e.g., different sales outlet). Weather information is expected to help farmers reduce crop losses due to extreme weather events such as storms. Crop advisory information is expected to induce farmers to adopt new crop varieties and improve their cultivation practices (Fafchamps and Minten, 2012). Due to limited human resources in agricultural extension, farmer’s information needs could not be satisfied at right time. Though there are several ICT extension approaches, the penetration of its services among farming community is minimal. The mobile short message service (SMS) emerged as a boon to transfer or disseminate agricultural information to the farmers on various aspects (Saravanan, 2010).

The DEMIC, ACRC of TNAU and KVKs in Tamil Nadu state are sending SMS based Market, Weather and Technology advisories in Tamil version to the registered farmer’s maximum 250 characters length of SMS were prepared in Tamil and sent periodically to the registered farmers by the above-mentioned organisations. However the effectiveness of such SMS to farmers is not known.

Hence, this paper focused on understanding this researchable issue framed with the following objectives:

a. To analyze the profile characteristics of farmers receiving SMS based advisories in agriculture from various sources.
b. To find out the utilization behaviour of farmers towards Market, Weather and Technological advisories in agriculture.
c. To study the farmers decision-making behavior on the adoption of SMS based advisories.
d. To identify the constraints faced by the farmers in accessing the SMS based advisories.

For this study, the institutions such as DEMIC (Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell of TNAU), ACRC (Agro Climate Research Centre, TNAU) and KVK (Krishi Vigyan Kendra, MYRADA), which were exclusively involved in the delivery of market, weather, and technology advisories respectively throughout Tamil Nadu, were selected.

To study the effectiveness of mobile SMS-based market, weather, and technology advisories, the registered farmers of DEMIC, ACRC & KVK were interviewed through a semi-structured interview schedule over the telephone regarding the usefulness of the SMS service and their technology adoption behaviour. Telephone-based interview was resorted for data collection considering the budget available for the study. DEMIC and ACRC had the list of district-wise registered farmers to receive SMS periodically.

Accordingly, Erode district recorded the maximum number of farmers to receive SMS from DEMIC, and hence Erode was selected. In the case of ACRC, Coimbatore district recorded the maximum number of registered farmers to receive SMS on weather advisories. Accordingly, Coimbatore district was selected to draw samples for collecting data for the study. The KVK, MYRADA located in Erode was purposively selected as it is one of the KVKs in Tamil Nadu state that has been sending SMS-based advisories regularly and continuously to farmers for a long time.

A list of farmers in the selected district who were registered for receiving SMS was obtained from the concerned office. Totally, 30 farmers from each of the organizations viz., DEMIC, ACRC, and KVK were selected through the simple random sampling method, summing up to a total of 90 respondents.

The most effective independent variables were selected for the study based on reviews. Adoption and perception behavior of farmers were selected as dependent variables.

• Adoption is operationalised as the decision taken by a registered farmer to make use of the SMS-based Market/Weather/Technology advisories sent by the study organizations (DEMIC, ACRC, and KVK) as applicable to his farm. It is measured based on the perception of the registered farmer, which was calculated based on the number of SMS advisories adopted considering the total number of relevant SMS received by the farmers.

• Statistical tools like descriptive statistics – mean, frequencies, percentage, independent sample t-test, and chi-square test were used.

• Farmers seeking perception towards SMS-based agro advisories were prepared. The respondents were asked to state on a three-point continuum viz., agree, undecided, and disagree, with the score of 3, 2, and 1 respectively.

Based on the scores, the perception index was obtained using the formula given as follows:

Perception Index =

$\left(Total\; scoreIndividual\; respondent’s\; score\right)\times 100$

The overall perception level of farmers towards mobile-based agro advisories was obtained based on the identified class interval.

Market Advisories

Table 1 shows that half of the respondents (50.00%) were found to be old aged, followed by middle-aged (40.00%), and the remaining 10.00% were young. About 36.67% of the respondents were found to have undergone collegiate education, followed by 30.00% of the respondents who had secondary education. Further, 13.33%, 10%, 6.67%, and 3.33% of the respondents were in primary, illiterate, middle, and functionally literate levels of education, respectively. More than half (60.00%) of the respondents had a medium level of farming experience, and 43.34% of the respondents were medium farmers.

From Table 2, it is found that a little more than half (53.33%) of the respondents adopted the SMS-based market advisories. Only 43.75% of the respondents revealed that they would go for direct adoption. One-third of them said that they would go for adoption only after discussing the SMS with fellow farmers, and one-fourth (25.00%) of the respondents reported that they would adopt SMS advisories only after discussing them with agro-input dealers.

Weather Advisories

The results in Table 1 show that 70.00% of the respondents were found to be old aged, followed by middle-aged (16.67%), and the remaining 13.33% were young. More than one-third (36.67%) of the respondents had collegiate education, followed by 23.33%, 20%, 13.33%, and 6.67% of the respondents who were in primary, secondary, middle, and illiterate levels of education, respectively.

The majority (70.00%) of the respondents had a medium level of farming experience, and 56.67% of the respondents were medium farmers. Based on the results from the table, it can be revealed that more than half of the respondents (56.67%) had adopted the SMS-based weather advisories.

From Table 2, it is found that only 23.50% of the respondents reported that they would go for direct adoption. About 35.30% of the respondents said that they would go for adoption of SMS advisories.

Table 1. Distribution of respondents according to their profile

Table 2. Farmer’s Decision Making behavior on the adoption SMS based advisories

Table 3. Distribution of respondents based on perception towards SMS based advisory system

Table 4. Constraints faced by the farmers in accessing the required information through SMS

Majority of the Respondents' Perception on SMS-Based Agro Advisories

The majority of the respondents felt that SMS-based agro advisories were easy to handle, access, share, store, and refer. These facts might have been the reason for the medium to high level of perception as resulted in this study.

Constraints Faced by the Farmers in Accessing the SMS-Based Advisories

Though there are several ICT-based extension approaches, the penetration of the ICT-based agricultural service has not been practiced much among the farming communities (Singh et al., 2015). Based on the available information, different constraints in disseminating mobile SMS-based agro advisories were enlisted from respondents. Responses from farmers were recorded on an individual ranking basis. Descriptive statistics were used for the interpretation of collected information.

During the telephonic interview, it was found that there existed a gap between farmers and extension personnel in terms of face-to-face interaction. We need to establish supporting infrastructure and capacity building for the farmers in order to utilize the mobile-based agro advisories such as weather information, proper market information of a particular commodity, and agricultural technology information. This derives support from the findings of Madan Singh et al. (2015).

Most of the farmers reported that irrelevancy of the messages, lack of recommendations on the latest technologies, and lack of trustworthiness of the messages were the constraints in accessing the required information.

Findings of the Study

The study revealed that the majority of the registered farmers (64.00%) belonged to the old age category with a middle level of education, medium level of farming experience, and possessed a medium size of land holdings. Results showed that the adoption of SMS-based advisories was low among registered farmers of KVK as compared to that of ACRC and DEMIC.

The majority (87.80%) of the respondents had a medium level of perception towards SMS-based advisories. Most of the farmers reported irrelevancy of the messages and lack of recommendations on the latest technologies as the prime constraints in accessing the required information.

Proposed Strategies for Enhancing the Effectiveness of Mobile-Based SMS Advisories

a. Create awareness among the farming community about mobile-based SMS advisories.
b. Training may be given to the farmers on how to access SMS facilities on mobile.
c. Area-specific and problem-specific information should be provided to the farmers.
d. Experts and organizations must give appropriate replies to queries and information raised by the farmers.

Policy Implication

The study implies that SMS advisories in agriculture can only create awareness and provide knowledge to farmers about technologies that exist to solve their field problems. Farmers cannot be convinced to go for field-level adoption of technologies directly by sending SMS advisories.

In the case of decision-based SMS advisories such as market and weather information, a considerable proportion of farmers go for adoption directly without having further discussions about SMS advisories. However, in the case of technologies recommended in the form of SMS advisories to solve field-level problems such as the management of disease/pest/weed/nutritional disorders in crops, a major proportion of farmers (76.00%) had adopted such technologies only after having discussions about the SMS with their fellow farmers and/or input dealers.

This implies that ICT-based extension services (e.g., SMS advisories, websites, portals, etc.) can be effective if they are combined with personal interaction with extension officials/experts who can convince the farmers, clarify doubts about SMS, and motivate them to go for the adoption of the recommended technologies.