1. Introduction
Agriculture is the crucial sector of the Indian economy, predominantly because the majority (64.2%) of the rural population of India is dependent on it [
1]. Indian agriculture accounts for 18% of the country’s GDP, and approximately 62.5% of the Indians derive their livelihood from the horticultural sector [
2]. Farming in the western parched region of the Rajasthan State is principally rain fed. Farmers in this region of the country are poor and have limited access to market information, innovation, and strategies, leading to low farm productivity [
3].
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is critical to the dissemination of market information to farmers. ICT also facilitates the dissemination of information on business skills and production practices to the farmers [
4]. In India, the provision of agricultural knowledge to farmers is administered by the government agencies (i.e., the government Agricultural Extension System).
The information exchange between extension and the farmers is presented in
Figure 1.
Notes: Information flow is shown by the line linking the boxes. The green boxes refer to the public sector, and the blue ones to the Private sector. ATMA denotes Agricultural Technology Management Agency, DoA denotes Department of Agriculture, ICAR denotes Indian Council for Agricultural Research, FFS denotes farmer field school, FBO/SHG denotes farmer-based organization/self-help group, SAU denotes state agricultural university, KVK denotes Krishi Vigyan Kendra (farm science center), and NGO denotes non-governmental organization.
Information can be defined as data that is systematically collected and relevant, and serves as a resource [
5,
6]. Agricultural Information is the systematically collected, published and unpublished data relating to the agricultural sector [
7]. The users of agricultural information include researchers, organizers, policymakers, instructors, students, field laborers, program administrators, and farmers [
8]. In the contemporary framework, the farming community can be categorized as literate and illiterate farmers based on their educational levels. In the Rajasthan State in India, agricultural information is provided to literate farmers through Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Center) in the form of vocational learning or electronic media, but this approach to information provision could not be accessed by illiterate farmers. Traditionally, illiterate farmers can be instructed by audio-visual modes.
The challenges faced by the agriculture sector in Rajasthan are increasing gap between demand and availability of water, scanty and uncertain rainfall, deteriorating quality of land and underground water, large gap between potential and realized yield of crops and high inter-year variation in productivity [
9]. The vulnerability of the farmers increases with changing environmental and socio-economic conditions [
10].
The economic rationale for the farmers’ access to information is to enable them to the manage risks and uncertainties regarding production and marketing of their produce. The better the farmers manage these risks and uncertainties the more profitable their businesses become. ICT facilitates awareness and access to market information among the farmers [
4]. There are more than 200 ICT development agencies in different stages of implementation in India e.g., Bhoomi, Drishtee. These agencies provide information relating to, for instance, climate reports, and marketing information e.g., Krishi Vigyan Kendras/Farm Science Centers at Ahmednagar, Baramati) [
11].
Farmers obtain production and marketing information from various sources [
12,
13,
14]. Some of these sources utilize ICTs while the others are Non-ICT sources. The effect of age, education and farm characteristics on adoption of ICT has been extensively documented in the literature [
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20]. Consequently, this study examined the effect of percentage of information sought from ICT sources and the percentage of information sought from Non-ICT sources on the farmers’ overall access to production and marketing information. The socio-economic and some farm–level characteristics have also been included in the analysis in this study. It is worth noting that the findings regarding the effect of age on the adoption of ICT are contradictory. Thus, whereas some studies revealed a positive influence of age on the adoption of ICT, other studies revealed negative influence [
15,
16,
17,
18,
19].
In the western infertile part of Rajasthan, the farmers’ access to information is foreseen to be extremely poor, ill-timed, less credible, and not cost-effective [
3]. Acceptance of mobile phones as an advent of delivering agriculture-related data relies on the accessibility of mobile network in the rural terrains.
Information technology is very important for forecasting the climate. Farmers can obtain climate and weather updates through communication satellites and different technologies. They can also obtain information on market prices of the products. Correspondingly, the appropriate agricultural information may help to minimize the prices paid for agricultural inputs by the farmers, increase the quality of the produce, and increase the marketing prices and profits [
21].
The objectives of this study are twofold as follows: (i) to compare access to production and marketing information between two categories of farmers (i.e., farmers who sought information from ICT sources and those that sought information from Non-ICT sources; (ii) to empirically examine the effects of the percentage of information sought from ICT sources, and the percentage of information sought from Non-ICT sources on famers’ overall access to production and marketing information.
Conceptual Framework
Farmers require production and marketing and information to support their business operations. These farmers use the information obtained from a source or combination of sources for their activities. They utilize ICT and Non-ICT sources to obtain agricultural information for the farm activities.
The conceptual framework for this study hinges on the differences between farmers’ access to production and marketing information based on the sources of the information (i.e., ICT sources and Non-ICT sources), (
Figure 2).
4. Conclusions
This study examined famers’ access to production and marketing information in the Semi-Arid Region of Rajasthan State in India. Primary data was collected using a multistage sampling procedure and questionnaire administration from 133 farmers in Jalore, Pali and Sirohi districts in the Rajasthan State. The study examined the differences in farmers’ access to different types of marketing and production information using the Analysis of Variance test. The study also examined the differences in access to each type production and marketing information between two categories of farmers (i.e., farmers who sought information from ICT sources and those that sought information from Non-ICT sources) using the student’s t-test. Finally, the study examined the overall effects of the percentage of information sought from ICT sources, and the percentage of information sought from Non-ICT sources on famers’ access to production and marketing information. The results of the Analysis of Variance test regarding the farmers’ access to different types of production and marketing information revealed that the user type (i.e., ICT versus Non-ICT users) significantly explains the differences in farmers’ access to the different types of marketing and production information. These results are consistent with the empirical results of the student’s t-test that farmers’ access to different types of production and marketing information from ICT sources is significantly higher than from Non-ICT sources. Consistently, the empirical results of the multiple regressions revealed that the percentage of production and marketing information obtained from ICT sources had a positive significant influence on the farmers’ level of access to marketing and production information. On the contrary, the percentage of marketing and production information obtained from Non-ICT sources had a negative significant influence on the farmers’ level of access to marketing and production information. These results suggest that ICT sources of marketing and production information play a crucial role in the farmers’ access to this information for their business operations and that the male farmers have more access to production and marketing information than the female farmers.
The policy recommendation from this study is as follows. It is imperative that the government through its agencies in the agricultural sector train the farmers (especially the female farmers) to seek information from ICT sources to obtain adequate information for their production and marketing operations. In this respect, the crucial role of the Extension Department of the Ministry of Agriculture in the training programs is a step in the right direction. Also, the literacy level of the illiterate farmers can be improved through informal education and training to enable them to understand the means of accessing production and marketing information from ICT sources. The combined crucial role of the Ministry of Agriculture and adult education department of the Ministry of Education would be very important in raising the literacy level of the farmers. Finally, public-private partnership in the provision of ICT infrastructure to make adequate production and marketing information available to the famers through ICT sources is also very important.
The key limitation of this study is its coverage, i.e., the data is only from the sample of farmers in three districts in Rajasthan State in India. Therefore, extending the research area to other regions within India to provide more general conclusions is an excellent opportunity for future research.