Assessment of ICT Systems on Green Gram Productivity: a Case of Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project in Mwala Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Despite agriculture’s economic importance, levels of production and productivity are still low, and access to agricultural information remains a challenge especially for smallholder farmers. Also, while agricultural extension services are an important tool for knowledge transfer, in Kenya, the desirable extension staff to farmer ratio should be 1:400 but the current ratio is 1:1000 which makes follow up of farmers difficult leading to low impact of training which further leads to low productivity. The Kenyan Government’s (GoK) policy framework on agricultural extension points out the possibilities for ICT to enhance the quality and speed up the conveyance and sharing of information to farmers. Most research in the existing literature have only analyzed the impact on markets and prices, and even then, the conclusions are varied. There are few reports on the effect of ICT activities on technology adoption and productivity. Therefore, this research study adopted the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to carry out an assessment of ICT systems on green gram productivity in Mwala Sub-County, Kenya, to check if these ICT systems have been helpful to the smallholder farmers. The researcher managed to interview 128 farmers from a sample size of 142, with a 90 percent response rate. To analyze the data, the researcher used version 25 of the SPSS software. Findings from this study indicate that ICT systems have helped farmers in Mwala increase their productivity of green grams as the output/yield from green grams has increased. ICT systems have also helped to decrease the cost of production of green gram farming and also helped to increase the income they get from green gram farming. The study additionally demonstrates that a farmer's perceived ease of use, attitude and perceived usefulness towards an ICT system or platform will affect how farmers adopt and actually use the ICT systems in farming.