ADOPTION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN ENHANCING FOOD SECURITY AMONG SMALL-SCALE FARMERS IN DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined adoption of Information Communication Technology in Enhancing Food Security among Small-Scale Farmers in Delta State, Nigeria. The objectives were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics and Likert scale while hypothesis one and two were analyzed with multiple regression and Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) respectively. Sample size adopted through multi-stage random sampling was 88. The mean age, farming experience, farm size and household size were 43.05 years, 12.66 years, 3.79ha and 7 persons, respectively. Most (82.96%) of the farmers were aware of ICT use on farm production. The use of ICT was constraint by high cost of ICT tools, poor network coverage, lack of funds and poor infrastructure. Socio-economic characteristics of the farmers like gender (b = 3.081), age (b = -2.017), educational level (b = 2.315), farming experience (b = 3.001) and farm size (b = 0.986) played significant role in their perceived contribution of ICT to farmers production. Result also revealed that significant relationship exist between farmers with low and those with high level of ICT awareness in agricultural production. The study therefore recommended that government should make policies that should help to improve infrastructure that concerns roads, electricity supply and network coverage so that they can be encouraged to the use of ICT tools for improved agricultural production.