THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION TO BARLEY PRODUCER FARMERS IN GUMER WOREDA, SOUTHERN NATIONS NATIONALITIES AND PEOPLES’ REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Barley is the most economically important crop in Ethiopian as well as Gumer woreda. Information is a crucial resource and production factor in agriculture which brings fresh ideas and awareness of new opportunities, stimulates new thinking and practices and improves decision making on problem facing in farming activities. However, products and productivity of barley in the study area were very low. Inadequate access to agricultural information about barley production and marketing were one of the bottlenecks for this low products and productivity. Hence, this study was designed to assess the contributions of agricultural information to barley producer farmers in Gumer woreda. A survey approach was employed to collect important data from sample respondents for the study. Multi stages sampling were used in which both purposive and random sampling procedures was followed to select four kebeles and 149 respondents. Structured interview schedule was developed, pretested and used to collect essential data from sample respondents for the study. Discussion with key informants (DA, SMSt and GWAO officials), and members of four focus group discussion and field observations was conducted to generate qualitative data of the study. In addition, secondary data of the study were gathered from reports of Gumer woreda agricultural office, records of DA and by browsing internet. The quantitative data of the study were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools including mean, frequency, percentage, chi square, and ANOVA and econometrics models of ordered logit model. The ordered logit model result reveals that education level, radio ownership, income, access to information and information seeking behavior of the respondents had positive and significant influence on contributions of agricultural information toward barley producer farmers, whereas, age of respondents has negative and significant influence on agricultural information contributions. The findings, unveils that more than 60% of respondents had access to agricultural information about barley production and marketing. It was also revealed that access to market related information by respondent was lower as compared to those of production related information. The overall contributions of agricultural information toward barley producer farmers in the study area were at moderate level. Based on the findings, effective utilization of radio and mobile phone, application of relevant information transmission media, allocating responsible person for information dissemination, teaching farmers to engage in market oriented production, provision of information in local language and strengthening adult education were suggested to improve the benefits of farmers from agricultural information.