20 pages., via online journal., During the last 10 years, different initiatives have been implemented to provide mobile-based extension services for the agricultural sector in Egypt. The current study compared the quality of agricultural extension messages between public and private providers. A simple random sample of 120 farmers was selected representing 7% of the total farmers registered in the databases of Ministry of Agriculture (public services) and Shoura company (private services). Farmers assessed a sample of 10 messages delivered by both providers in terms of six indicators namely (1) access, (2) utilization, (3) timeliness, (4) trust, (5) satisfaction, and (6) sharing information with other farmers. The findings revealed the lack of access to messages by the farmers in the two services. However, more than 50% had utilized the majority of messages (in case of access). The study also showed significant differences between perception of farmers to quality attributes in public and private services (Access 6.77, 0.01; Utilization 8.44, 0.004; Timeliness 8.55, 0.002; Satisfaction 8.88, 0.001; information sharing 7.62, 0.009) except for trust (1.11, 0.4). Findings provide practical implications to support mobile-based extension services to enable sharing information and link farmers with other actors in the agricultural value chain.
13 pages., via online journal., The agriculture sector in Pakistan faces enormous challenges of lack of farm knowledge adoption due to the farmers’ lack of access to the latest information. Recently various mobile phone-based farm advisory services (FAS) have been introduced as an alternative to the conventional extension methods. Despite many ICT initiatives, the performance of these projects remains unsatisfactory. The current study was designed to identify these FAS, farmers’ extent of use, and factors associated with their adoption. Two hundred and forty farmers were surveyed in the rural areas of district Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed with SPSS software. Findings revealed that 77.08% of the sampled farmers were using mobile-based FAS. Telecom and private sector FAS were reported to have the highest share of users (37.08% and 25.83% respectively). Results of the logistic regression showed that farmers’ educational level, mobile use skills, mobile possession duration and the number of mobile phones in a family were found positively significant, while farmers’ age and contact with extension agents were negatively significant. The findings conclude that education and digital literacy are essential for the use of mobile-based alternatives and emphasize the need for training and educating the farmers.
