Vol. 12, Special Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
Keyur Modi, Swati Sharma and Narendra Singh

Abstract:
Agriculture is the mainstay of Indian economy. The 21^stcentury which is well known as "Information Age", is the sphere which influenced by information and who may have can command the world. Agricultural information is an essential aspect that affects all production factors. By providing relevant, reliable and useful information by extension services, research institutions and other agricultural organizations can aid farmers decision making process and effects overall productivity factors, such as land, labour, capital and managerial. ICT in agriculture is an emerging field that aims to boost India's agricultural and rural development. It involves applications of modern innovative and scientific ways that can effective in rural domain. It can deliver on time accurate information necessary for the farmers which facilitates better agricultural output. Keeping this in view, the present paper explores the socio economic characteristics of farmers using ICT tools for agricultural information. The present study was conducted in South Gujarat region. The study covered three districts (Navsari, Valsad and Surat) of South Gujarat. Total 300 farmers were selected for the study and data were collected using structured interview schedule. It was found from the study that majority of the respondent farmers were male in medium age group, possessed graduate degree and had four members in their family having 5 to 10 hectare of land holdings with farming experience of 10 to 15 years and were having agriculture and animal husbandry as a major source of income with annual income of more than five lakhs. The study also revealed that majority of the farmers had received training on ICT and were using ICT tools from last three years. About one third of the farmers were engaged with farmers associations and majority of the farmers were having high level of extension contact, innovative proneness, economic orientation, scientific orientation and medium level of risk orientation.