Agricultural Information and Communication Center in Disseminating Agricultural Information in Bangladesh: Effects, Problems and Suggestions

Abstract

The government of Bangladesh established Agricultural Information and Communication Centre (AICC) to communicate with mass farmers quickly. This paper aimed at analyzing the direct and indirect effects of farmers selected characteristics on the effectiveness of AICC in disseminating agricultural information and identifying problem faced by the farmers in getting service from AICC and probable suggestions to overcome identified problems. Data were collected from randomly selected 90 farmers of Faridpur district, Bangladesh using a pre-tested interview schedule. Path analysis was applied to assess the direct and indirect effects of farmers’ selected characteristics on the effectiveness of AICC. On the other hand, Problem Faced Index (PFI) and Frequency of response was used to identify problem and suggestions. The analysis showed that farmers’ use of ICT had the highest direct effect (0.345) in the positive direction followed by ICT using experience (0.245) and ICT using confidence (0.237) on the effectiveness of AICC. The other variables have direct and indirect effects were ICT using confidence and ICT using experience.  Limited availability of ICT tools and technology in AICC were most severe problem followed by technical problems of different ICT based media in AICC and low bandwidth speed of internet. The study provided suggestions to increase the efficiency of the AICC in communicating agricultural information.