Information orientation of small-scale farmers' community enterprises in Northern Thailand

Abstract

     Small-scale farmers contribute between 50 and 70 percent of the global food supply; however, in rural areas, small-scale farmers who own factors of production, ineffectively use information in their agribusiness and have inadequate information for decision making as a result of the digital divide and information asymmetry in the agricultural sector. Such phenomena can be attributable to the lack of the application of an information orientation (IO) model in the field of agricultural information management under a developing country context. This paper identified issues on information technology (IT) for agricultural development in rural northern Thailand and explored the agribusiness performance of smallscale farmers' community enterprises based on their IT capabilities. In-depth interviews with 15 experts and focus group discussion with 55 small-scale farmers in rural northern Thailand were employed in this study. By evaluating three IO capabilities of small-scale farmers' community enterprises, the results revealed that they possess a low-to-medium level of information behavior and values (IBV), a low level of information management practices (IMP), and a low level of information technology practices (ITP). The IO study sheds light on the actual issues of the IT capabilities of small-scale farmers' community enterprises that have been ignored in rural Thailand for a long time. The results suggest that there is ability to: (1) develop their agribusiness acumen; (2) detect and identify relevant information; (3) dynamically seek and respond to the changes in their competitive environment; (4) effectively manage their information over the life cycle of information use; and (5) proactively share information and knowledge with peers, local elites, experts, and government officials without language barriers. Achieving these outputs will be the key success factors in leveraging Thai agriculture in rural areas. The work calls for a bold new role for IT in agricultural development with the development of rural areas beyond being merely technocentric but rather incorporating a human-centric element.