Socio-economic, Communication and Psychological Characteristics of the Farmers using Mobile based Agro-advisory Services

Abstract

The present study were carried out in Etah and Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh state to know the socio-economic, communication and psychological characteristics of farmers using mobile based Agro-advisory Services. Descriptive as well as Analytical research design was adopted for the present study to make a critical evaluation. A total of 40 percent of respondents from the sampling frame were chosen for the study. Thus, the final sample size comprised of 180 (40% of 450) respondents. The method of proportional allocation in stratified random sampling procedure was adopted for the selection of respondents. The results revealed that most of the registered farmers were middle aged (54.44%) and all of them were male, had educational qualification up to higher secondary level (25%). Majority of the households mainly relied on farming as their main source of income (86.11%) and belonged to medium level of annual income (65.50%). They had land up to 4 hectares (50.60%), fellow farmers were most popular, and vast majority (98.90%) of farmers contacted them to get agricultural information, most of respondents (67.78%) owned two to three communication media. It was also found that 62.22 percent had medium level of mass media exposure and about 43.90 percent of the respondents had low level of extension agency contact, less than half (42.80%) of respondents had high economic motivation and decision making ability (40.60%). Only 38.90 per cent of respondents had medium level of achievement motivation.