Use of Social Media as a Source of Agricultural Information by Farmers

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Farmers, agricultural programs, agricultural establishments, and non-governmental establishments square measures utilizing internet a pair of applications and platforms to publicize agricultural info with regard to farmers in India. The study’s main objective was to analyze the employment of social media as a source of agricultural information with reference to farmers in India. To find out important objectives about farmers in India; establish information seeking behavior of the farmers in India; verify the accessibility and utilization of agricultural information from totally different extension services among farmers; and examine the challenges knowledgeable in accessing the abundant needed agricultural information. The qualitative methods that were used embodies interviews of an attention clusters of farmers who were eager to access valuable agricultural information and found difficulty to obtain it. From the analysis, it is deduced that agricultural info is extremely needed amongst a majority of farmers in the study space. The study deduced that farmers in the study space source for agricultural information from a different form of sources, key amongst that include the internet, social media, and extension services and also from the study it can be inferred that a majority of farmers approach the use of social media in agricultural information seeking with the key among that embody the web, social media and extension services. From the study it is concluded that a majority of farmers approach the employment of social media in agricultural information seeking with a positive attitude, pointing to the assumption that social media is largely beneficial and important as a resource of agricultural information. The main common challenges faced by the farmers is of poor access of network, power outages, and costly charges while accessing the internet. The whole study recommends that we need to develop a social media platform especially for farmers which can be thus defined by them from their smart phones if available or from centers that can be established in every village whereby farmers can obtain agricultural information online and that social media should be fully utilized to provide; feedback, complement extension programs, access local and international markets and complement communication campaigns; their goal is to bring about agricultural development.

Keywords: Agricultural, Social media, Farmer