An Appraisal of Farmers’ Knowledge Level on Information and Communication Technologies Utilization in Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sharing information is very important in disseminating of agricultural information in Nigeria. Therefore, this study examined farmer’s knowledge level on utilization of ICT tools for farming in Niger state, Nigeria. A ordered logit model and descriptive statistics were used to examine the data that were gathered from 135 respondents. The findings showed that the majority of respondents (86.7%) had a good level of education, had an average age of 30, and had an average of 11 years of experience producing food crops. However data analysis reveals that mobile phone (97.8%) ranked first in terms of types of ICTs equipment used by the farmers while, fixed telephone (32.6%) was the least. Farmers also had moderate (61.5%) knowledge level on ICTs equipment. The ordered Logit regression analysis indicates that the following variables were found to be important determinants of farmers' knowledge level about the use of ICTs equipment in crop production: age, gender, marital status, compatibility, relative advantage, educational level, and farming experience. Therefore, it was suggested that an ICT training program be set up or arranged to educate farmers about the benefits of utilizing ICT technology in their farming operations