7 pages, Present study was carried out in 2018-19, in the three districts of Punjab i.e., Faisalabad, Sargodha and Muzaffargarh to analyse the factors affecting dissemination of agricultural information to farmers through ICT tools. One hundred and twenty respondents were selected randomly from each district, making a total sample of 360 respondents. Concerning the general use of ICT
tools in the dissemination of agricultural information, the findings indicated a change in trend
from the radio (11.1%) towards TV (85.6%) and mobile phone SMS (75.8%). The relevance of information and ICT tools’ cost appeared as common determinant factors for technology transfer effectiveness by ICT tools. Furthermore, farmers also indicated that the most effective
tool to disseminate agricultural information was television, followed by the mobile phone and social media. Moreover, most of the farmers (81.7 % and 73.1%, respectively) indicated that the
lack of innovative information and difficulties in using ICT tools were significant barriers while
communicating via these tools. The use of television and mobile phones in extension should be improved because they were relatively more popular among farmers. It was recommended that the Punjab government should also design a system of periodic monitoring and evaluation of the use of information and communication technologies in the extension with agricultural universities’ participation and relevant non-governmental organizations in Punjab. A dynamic feedback system should be designed, based on the local advisory committees’ recommendations, to determine the local farmers’ needs/problems, which should be sent immediately to the Directorate of Agricultural Information to suggest some suitable solution and disseminate through ICTs.
18 pages, This study examined gaps in climate information within public agricultural extension in Limpopo Province, South Africa. It assessed extension officers’ climate change perceptions, knowledge and climate education. Lastly, the study examined the extension approaches for overall suitability of climate information disseminated to rural smallholder farmers. The results indicated that participants were predominately male, with tertiary education. Education levels had an influence on exposure to climate education and extension approaches in disseminating agricultural information to farmers. There is a need to retool extension officers in climate change extension work, integrating indigenous knowledge to increase suitability and acceptability of information by smallholder farmers.
19 pages, This special issue presents recent European Commission-funded research into on-farm demonstration, undertaken through the Horizon 2020 PLAID (Peer-to-peer learning: Accessing innovation through demonstration), AgriDemo-F2F (building an interactive agridemo-hub community: enhancing peer-to-peer learning), and NEFERTITI (Networking European Farms to Enhance Cross Fertilisation and Innovation Uptake through Demonstration) projects, jointly branded ‘FarmDemo’.
18 pages, Agricultural extension plays a crucial role in the Indonesian Agricultural Revitalization Program for the 2005-2025 periods, where sugarcane is one of the fourteen priority crops. The provision of an agricultural extension was aimed to increase the income and productivity of sugarcane farmers. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of agricultural extension access on smallholder sugarcane farmers' performance in Indonesia. This study used data from the 2014 Indonesian Sugarcane Farm Household Survey, consisting of 8,831 farmers. This study employed propensity score matching to estimate the effect of access to an agricultural extension on several outcome variables. These variables were gross value-added (GVA), net value added (NVA), labor productivity (LP), land productivity (LDP), net income (NI), and remuneration of family labor (ROFL). The result shows that having access to an agricultural extension increases GVA by 40.5%, NVA by 40.3%, labor productivity by 42.8%, and NI by 40.2%. However, access to agricultural extension insignificantly affects ROFL due to the differences in family working units. Also, farmers with Agricultural Extension access have 13.7% lower land productivity than non-Agricultural Extension farmers since the former has lower input use intensity than the latter. These results suggest that providing agricultural extension service is adequate to improve sugarcane farmers' economic performance.
