Assessing the Effectiveness of Information and Communication Technologies for Accessing Agricultural Information Among Arable Crop Farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria

The study assessed the effectiveness of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in accessing information on arable crop production in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 90 arable crop farmers. Data were collected through the use of interview schedule and analysed using descriptive statistics to analyse the study hypotheses. Results revealed that the mean age of respondents was 50 years. Majority of the respondents (96.1%) were aware of radio, 72.3% telephone and 65.2% television. Radio was highly accessible (mean=2.5). This was followed by telephone (mean=2.3) and television (mean=1.8). In spite of farmers’ access to radio, television and telephone, there was low usage of the tools except for radio which had moderate use for sourcing information on arable crop production. These indicate that ICT tools were not effectively used among arable crop farmers, to access information on input delivery. There was no significant relationship between access and effectiveness of ICTs in disseminating information to arable crop farmers. It was recommended that extension institutions in Nigeria should train farmers on use of ICT facilities in accessing agricultural information in order to improve farmer’s productivity in the area