Adoption of Mobile Applications in Agriculture among Farmers in Nan, Thailand
Keywords:
Adoption of technology, Mobile applications in agriculture, Perception of technology, Organic farmersAbstract
With the rise of digital technologies and smartphones, mobile applications in agriculture based on smartphones have been rapidly developed. However, the benefits of mobile applications in agriculture for crop operations, farm management, and information system have not been fully achieved due to the low level of adoption. This paper studied: (1) the relation between age and educational level of farmers and size of farms, and the adoption of mobile applications; and (2) the perception of farmers towards the advantages and disadvantages of mobile applications. It adopted a case study method to analyze 60 crop farmers in Nan PGS (Participatory Guarantee System) agriculture group. The results showed that the adoption of applications depended on age and education level, whereas the size of farms had no relation with the adoption. Moreover, the results indicated a different perception of advantages and disadvantages of mobile applications among users, non-users, and prospective users. The groups of non-users and prospective users ranked lowest scores on the advantages on farm management. It is therefore suggested that educational institutions and agricultural development agencies should encourage new generation farmers to use agricultural-related applications and build awareness on the applications. This would then increase the application adoption and thereby help improve farm productivity.
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