Mobile SMS Advisories: An Analytical Study among Farmers
Prabha D.*
Dept. of Agricultural Extension and Rural Sociology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu (641 003), India
Arunachalam R.
Dept. of Agricultural Extension and Rural Sociology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu (641 003), India
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54083/ResBio/3.1.2021.33-36
Keywords: Adequacy, Farmers, Mobile phone, Relevancy, Timeliness
Abstract
Mobile phones play a major role to aid the farmers in promoting production activities. Tamil Nadu is a prime state in India witnessed huge volume of subscribers of mobile agro services from public advisories and also private advisories. Public mobile advisory system in the biggest service provider in Tamil Nadu where the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the state department of agriculture are two big monsters providing advisories to the farmers through SMS. The study was conducted in Annur and Kinthukadavu blocks of Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu with a sample of 200 farmers subscribing the SMS based agro advisories. The study revealed that little more than two-third of the respondents (67.50%) were using ordinary mobiles. Majority of the respondents (74.00%) expressed that the technical input on advance warning of weather risks was adequate, With regard to the inadequate services, cent percent of the respondents had expressed that the information on cold storage networks and transportation were inadequate. Most of the respondents (87.00%) expressed that they received relevant of messages on plant protection, With regard to non relevancy of the messages, cent percent of the respondents pointed out messages on cold storage networks and transportation. An overwhelming majority of the respondents (95.50%) had expressed that they received timely messages on advance warning of weather risks, with regard to the untimely messages, advisories on cold storage networks and transportation (100.00%). Cent percent of the respondents’ preferred only text based messages.
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Reference
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