RADIO AND MOBILE PHONE UTILIZATION AMONG SMALLHOLDER FARMERS FOR FOOD CROP MARKET INFORMATION: THE CASE OF DAMBOYA DISTRICT, KEMBATA TEMBARO ZONE, CENTRAL ETHIOPIA

Abstract

One of Sub-Saharan Africas most urgent development challenges, including Ethiopia, is increasing smallholder farmers’ capacity to participate in markets. Despite being recognized as important contributors to the production of a variety of food crops, smallholder farmers lack access to share market information, which results in weak links and sharing to the profitable markets. Due to the availability of modern information technology, the agricultural sector has become more knowledge intensive, which has increased the need for timely information flow among smallholder farmers. Radio and mobile phone could address the information gap among smallholder farmers since they are emerging as a key source amd means of information about market. The primary goal of this study was to investigate how smallholder farmers utilized radio and mobile phone for food crop market information. Cross-sectional and design science research methods were both used to carry out this study. 162 smallholder farmers in all were selected using multi-stage sampling techniques from the central Ethiopian region of Kembata Tembaro's Zone, Damboya District. Data collection tools included questionnaires, focus group discusions and key informant interviews were used to gather both quantitave and qultative data. The primary result of the research showed that 60.5% mobile phone, and 22.2% radio accessed by sampled respondents and while these divices were utilized 31.5% low extent, 54.1% mdium extent, and 14.2% high extent for food crop market information. The results of the ordered logit model showed that factors like education,access to training, knowledge, and land size had a positive and significant influence on radio and mobile phone utilization, while age, sex and marital status had a negative and significant influence on radio and mobile phone utilization among smallholder farmers for food crop market information. A framework and prototype were created to address the information limitation after analyzing all the variables that affected respondents utilization of radio and mobile phone for food crop market information. As a result, the study suggests that, ongoing training and the implementation of ICT-supported market information sharing platform at the district level, awareness should be raised on the potential benefits of radio and mobile phone applications and services on food crop market information.