Socio economic characteristics enhancing farmers’ use of mobile phones to access Agricultural information in Tanzania
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Date
2020
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Abstract
This paper sought to address the effect of farmers’ socio-economic characteristics on their
use of mobile phones to access agricultural information. Largely, literature
acknowledges that information is becoming an important ingredient in agriculture. Similarly,
literature reports farmers in Tanzania lacking access to agricultural information something
which greatly constrains efforts to improve agricultural development. One good thing is that,
mobile phone technology which is ubiquitously being subscribed to in Tanzania is believed
to have the potential to address information irregularities in various business setups including
in agriculture. The question a researcher asking why farmers in Tanzania not fetching the
potential mobile phones offers for agricultural development. Through face-to-face approach,
240 individual respondents were interviewed. A regression analysis ruled out variables that
significantly influenced farmers’ use of mobile phones to access agricultural information,
including their; age, marital status, literacy levels, farming systems, farm size, income levels,
sources of agricultural information, awareness, type phone owned whether featured or simple
phone, frequent of contact with other sources, skills in using mobile phones to access
agricultural information, supports from others, scale of production and distance from market.
The study concludes that; the named variables above have an influence on the use of mobile
phone to access agricultural information. Therefore, we recommend that, whatever efforts
meant to address the need for mobile phone application in agricult
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Keywords
Socio- economic characteristics, access to agricultural information, mobile phones