Barriers to ICT Usage: An Assessment Among the Sugarcane Farmers in Disadvantaged Districts of Tamil Nadu, India
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Barriers to ICT Usage: An Assessment Among the Sugarcane Farmers in Disadvantaged Districts of Tamil Nadu, India D. Puthira Prathap1
•
P. Murali1 • V. Venkatasubramanian1
Received: 4 June 2020 / Accepted: 3 September 2020 Ó Society for Sugar Research & Promotion 2020
Abstract This study assessed the barriers limiting the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) usage of sugarcane farmers in the disadvantaged districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Altogether, 240 respondents belonging to all the disadvantaged districts of Tamil Nadu, viz. Tiruvannamalai, Cuddalore, Villupuram and Nagapattinam districts formed the sample case of the study. The sugarcane farmers responded to a list of barriers on a 3—point continuum, viz. not important, important and very important. ANOVA and Tukey multiple comparison tests were applied to analyze the data. ‘Lack of time’ and ‘lack of access’ were perceived to be the two most important barriers. Significant differences were found among the districts in terms of the sugarcane farmers’ perception to five barriers to ICT usage, viz. lack of time (perceived as more severe by Nagapattinam district farmers), lack of access (perceived as more severe by Tiruvannamalai district farmers), lack of training (perceived as more severe by Nagapattinam district farmers), no perception of benefits (perceived as more severe by Cuddalore farmers) and expensive input (perceived as more severe by Tiruvannamalai district farmers). Relatively, the sugarcane farmers of Tiruvannamalai and Nagapattinam districts had perceived the barriers to ICT usage as more severe. The differences in the perception of barriers ascertained by this study & D. Puthira Prathap [email protected] P. Murali [email protected] V. Venkatasubramanian [email protected] 1
ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore 641 007, India
envisage customized, district-level sugarcane extension strategies to overcome the barriers and effectively meet the information needs of farmers. Keywords ICT Barrier Internet usage Constraint Problem Sugarcane Farmer Disadvantaged region Tamil Nadu
Introduction Over the past two decades, numerous ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for agriculture initiatives have been developed and implemented by both the public and private sectors in India to disseminate information on agricultural production technologies, weather and market forecasts, etc. One of the earliest ICT projects in the country, the Warana Wired Village Project, was primarily planned to provide ICT facilities to sugarcane growers and members of the cooperative societies Kolhapur and Sangli districts of Maharashtra (Thadaboina 2009). Research institutions while setting the targets for ensuring sustainable sugarcane production in the country have suggested and employed conventional as well as ICT tools such as user-centered Web sites to cater to the information needs of the stakeholders in sugarcane farming (Prathap 2013). Several studies have made it clear that ICT usage could increase
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