ICT-Based Market Information and Adoption of Agricultural Seed Technologies Insight from Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja

Abstract

The purpose if this investigation was to determine the ICT-Based Market Information and Adoption of Agricultural Seed Technologies Insight from Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja. The objectives of the study were to; Describe the socio-economic characteristics of farmers in the study area, Assess the current level of adoption of ICT-based market information among farmers, Identify the factors that influence the adoption of ICT-based market information among farmers, Examine the challenges faced by farmers, in accessing and using ICT-based market information for their agricultural activities. Data was collected from 120 respondents in the study area using questionnaire, the data were subjected to descriptive data analysis. The results of the analysis showed that majority (60.00%) of the famers were male while 40.00% were female. 52.5% were between the age of 21-30, while 21.7% where between 31 – 40 years old and 15.0% were at least 20 years old, 6.7% were above 60 years old and 3.3% were between 51 – 60 years old with a mean age 51.18. Majority (53.30%) of the farmers have house hold size of 1-4 persons while 35.8% had house hold size of 5-8 persons. Majority (79.2%) of the farmers earn N 0- N100,000 while another 10.8% earns N100,001 – N 200,000. Majority (80.0%) of the farmers have a 0 – 10 years farming experience while 18.3% have 11 – 20 years of farming experience. The study therefore concludes that access to and use of ICT based information marketing is affected by some factors in the study area. The study also concludes that farmer use ICT based information for activities such as communicating with customers, learning of new ways of production and marketing, getting information about business, and to make production and marketing faster and it was recommended that Governments at the national level must collaborate with groups like farmers. Designed to allow the exchange of agriculturally related knowledge, information, and experiences regarding various ICT initiatives and projects in Africa. And Strategies for training and building up people’s, groups’, and communities’ capacity to be knowledgeable about using ICT to gain market information and links to new clients must be developed also doing so speeds up the adoption of new technology, the organization.