Farmers’ Need for an Agricultural Meteorological Information System in a Tropical Wet and Dry Climate: Imo as a Case Study

Okpara Okechukwu Dominic

doi:10.11648/j.ajaf.20150305.15

Abstract

In this paper, the Agricultural Meteorological Information System needs for rural farmers in Imo State, Nigeria, was determined in a survey of five hundred farmers using purposive sampling method and structured questionnaires. The study was able to reveal that there was need for the establishment of effective Agricultural Meteorological Information System support for enhanced agricultural productivity in Imo State. The survey also showed that the rural farmers showed great interest in using weather information for cultivation, and they also have high preference for the reception of agricultural meteorological information through their mobile phones over any other medium of information delivery in the rural areas.

Highlights

Information needs can be defined as the state of lack of desirable requisite(s) or commodity – information – necessary to deal with a situation as the individual sees fit [1]
Twenty-five percent (25%) of the farmers indicated that they would use weather information for pesticide/insecticide applications compared with 15% of the farmers who would use the same information for marketing of their agricultural products
Majority of the problems encountered by the farmers in using weather information are due to their inability to be near their television or radio sets during weather announcement periods; most of them do not have any device that they can use to browse the internet for weather information

Summary

Introduction

Information needs can be defined as the state of lack of desirable requisite(s) or commodity – information – necessary to deal with a situation as the individual sees fit [1]. According to [3], information needs arise when a person recognizes a gap in his/her state of knowledge and wishes to resolve that anomaly. Farmers do not always know what their information needs are. It could be that they are not aware that there is information out there that could help them to a great deal. They do not know that new information has rendered obsolete what they previously knew. It is only when they are exposed to the relevant information that the need is recognized

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion