Perception of the Members of Farmer Producer Organization on Mobile Agro-Advisory Service

Abstract

The main aim of Farmer Producer Organization (FPO) is to ensure better income for the producers through an organization of their own. Mobile phones despite their recent entry into agrarian communities are already helping those communities improve their agricultural activities. This allows the farmers to make a query in a local language from a mobile phone and receive personalized advice or relevant information on the same in local language. Keeping this in mind, a study was taken up to determine the perception of the respondents on mobile agro-advisory service. The study was taken up in Kanchipuram District with a sample of 120 registered members of Chennai Horticulture Produce Producer Company by using random sampling technique. The selected members of FPO obtained agro-advisory service through mobile phone. Usefulness of information through mobile service was measured under two dimensions viz., useful and not useful. Further, their perception on mobile service was also assessed against 12 items. Simple percentage was calculated based on their response. The findings on overall perception revealed that medium to high level of perception on usefulness of mobile advisory service was observed among majority of the respondents. Nearly three-fourth (74.16%) of the respondents reported that the information provided was both time and cost saving. Nearly three-fourth (73.33%) of the respondents expressed that they were satisfied with the local language used by mobile advisory service in delivering the agricultural information.