Abstract
Smallholder farmers’ access to markets has traditionally been constrained by lack of market information. The desire to strengthen farmer access to market has seen the emergence of a number of projects that employ ICT tools in the provision of market information. This study assesses the conditioners of the use of ICT tools in general and mobile phones in particular by smallholder farmers for agricultural transactions. The study finds that several farmer, farm and capital endowment factors affect the use of ICT tools and mobile phones. Specifically, age, occupation, nearness to output market, number of crop enterprises, farming experience literacy and crop income explain the use of tools while gender, nearness to output market, household size, owning a phone, level of literacy, crop income and value of assets explain the intensity of use of the mobile for agricultural transaction purposes. It discusses the implications of these findings for policy.
Highlights
Market access is one of the most important factors influencing the performance of smallholder agriculture in developing countries, and in particular least developed countries (Barrett, 2008; Kirsten, 2010)
Where C is the total input cost including transaction costs, W is a vector of input prices; X is vector of all production inputs; V is a vector of conventional variable inputs such as, fertilizer, seed, and pesticides used by the farmer; q is the output produced and sold using agricultural information I whose use embodies the use of ICT tools (T) including the mobile phones, radio, and computer based applications; L is the total labor requirement including both family (l) and hired labor (h)
This finding indicates that the use of ICT tools for agricultural transactions is greater among the younger farmers which corroborates the findings of past studies suggesting that this category of farmers are more literate and better able to use ICT (Okello, Ofwona-Adera & Mbatia, 2010)
Summary
Market access is one of the most important factors influencing the performance of smallholder agriculture in developing countries, and in particular least developed countries (Barrett, 2008; Kirsten, 2010). Access to new and better-paying markets for agricultural products is vital in enhancing and diversifying the livelihoods of poor subsistence or semi-subsistence farmers (Barrett, 2008). Recent attempts to resolve the problem of poor access to better performing markets by smallholder farmers have focused on promoting information transfer through ICT-based innovations (Tollens, 2006; Aker, 2008). These innovations include mobile telephony, internet/web-based means, and interactive video and CD-ROM programs as well as older ICT-based technologies namely the radio and television (Munyua, 2007).
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