13 pages, The study explored the contribution of information and communication technology (ICT)-based information sources to market participation among smallholder livestock farmers. Use of ICTs is considered paramount for providing smallholder farmers with required market information, and also to reduce market asymmetries. A double hurdle regression was utilized to analyze data collected from 150 smallholder livestock farmers in the study area. The results show that while use of ICT-based market information sources significantly influenced market participation, the effect of using ICT-based information sources on the intensity of market participation was not significant. Other variables shown to influence both market participation and the intensity of market participation were age, additional income and membership of farmer cooperatives. This suggests the need to consider other associated factors in the application and design of interventions that utilize ICT-based information sources to achieve market engagement among smallholders.
18 pages, Based on panel data from the Rural Fixed Point Survey of the Ministry of
Agriculture over the period 2004-2016 and supplementary survey data on information
and communications technology (ICT) applications in the countryside, this paper employs
the difference in differences (DID) method to analyze the effects of ICT applications on
rural households’ agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) with mobile phone signal,
internet and 3G mobile network connections as indicators, and decomposes and evaluates
the constituent factors. Our findings reveal a positive effect of ICTs on rural households’
TFP, which primarily stemmed from rising agricultural technical efficiency. However, ICTs
exerted no significant effect on agricultural technical progress during this paper’s data
period due to limited rural human capital. These findings are consistent with robustness test
results based on counterfactual and matching methods.