Use of Participatory Approach to Determine Adoption of ICT Agricultural Services

Smallholder farmers represent the biggest employment sector in rural areas of the developing world; besides being the most important contributors to the global food production. Agricultural services utilization depends largely on services dissemination and adoption. It is argued that farmers' decision to adopt services is greatly influenced by the amount of information that is available. Comparing the evolution of global food production and consumption, there is a strong indication of the need for means of increasing production. These gaps could be addressed by providing more support to smallholder farmers and by enabling them to access information on agricultural services such as weather updates, agricultural inputs, financial services, market prices among others. These services can be provided through the use of ICT. Despite the availability of different ICT services to disseminate agricultural services, adoption of ICT innovation remains a problem for smallholder farmers. This paper examines the adoption and application of a participatory approach for the transfer of agricultural services to farmers with the objective of enhancing sustainable agriculture; through an exploratory and an explanatory study design using a qualitative approach. The study avers that participatory approaches can empower collective groups of farmers and help to put decision-making in the hands of the farmers. Participatory research proved to be effective in enabling small-scale farmers and local decision makers to identify, develop and disseminate technologies, hence the much needed information and knowledge to help develop agricultural sector.