Farmers Attitude and Knowledge in Accessing aAQUA e-Agriservice in Maharashtra: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have potential to deliver timely and relevant information to farmers. Several projects integrate ICTs to disseminate the agricultural information to farming community. Almost All Questions Answered (aAQUA) e-Agriservice is one such web portal to address the queries raised by farmers. This study was carried out to find the attitude of farmers towards the aAQUA e-Agriservice and to assess its impact in terms of knowledge gain about Improved Dairy Farming Practices (IDFPs). The ex-post-facto research design was followed. The attitude scale and knowledge test were developed and administered to a sample of 120 each from user and non-user dairy farmers in four districts of Maharashtra state. Cronbach's alpha coefficient (#=0.91) of reliability test was employed for measuring the attitude of farmers. The results indicated that one-third (32.50%) of the users had more favourable attitude towards the e-Agriservice followed by 24.17% of the users with favourable attitude. About 47.50% of users had high level (67.72–78.29) of knowledge about IDFPs, whereas one-third (33.33%) of non-users had medium level (58.86–67.71). One way ANOVA revealed that the level of favourableness of attitude of the users towards e-Agriservice on knowledge levels of users about IDFPs found significant at 0.01% level of significance. The study suggested that the attitude of target clientele plays an important role in acceptance of ICT-based interventions which makes them knowledge empowered.