Exploring potential use of e-agriculture platform for ease market access among smallholder vegetable farmers in Bojanala District

Abstract

E-agriculture is a worldwide community of practice where farmers/individuals from all over the globe share knowledge, ideas, and resources on using information and communication technology in order to reach sustainable agriculture and improve rural development. E-agriculture requires the use of ICT tools which are very essential for the effective operation use of e-agriculture as a platform. Little or no studies in South Africa have explored the use of e-agriculture as a platform to easing market access. Thus, the aim of the study was to identify the use of e-agriculture platform for ease markets access by smallholder vegetable farmers in Bojanala District, North WestNorthwest Province. Specifically, the objectives of the study were to determine: the socio-demographic characteristics of smallholder vegetable farmers; determine whether the smallholder farmers in the Bojanala district are aware of e-agriculture; investigated the willingness of farmers to adopt e-agriculture and determined the factors affecting market access of smallholder vegetable farmers in markets. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a simple random selected sample of 92 farming households in Bojanala District. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the socio-demographic characteristics and to assess the level awareness of e-agriculture by farmers. In addition, binary logistic regression model was used to establish the significance of factors which affect willingness to adopt e-agriculture at a significance level of 5%. Moreover, factor analysis (FA) was used to determine the factors affecting market access. Descriptive results showed that 66.3% of farmers were female while only 33.70% of farmers were male. Pertaining to level of education, majority of farmers had no formal education (48.91%), 33.70% of the farmers only went to primary school, 17.39% of the farmer went secondary school and none have tertiary education. The descriptive results further revealed that, 29.35% of the farmers had no income besides farming, 46.74% of the farmers received grants from the government, 17.39% of the respondents are formally employed while 7.61% of the respondents have other forms of off-farm income. Moreover, Descriptive results showed that only 2.17% of the farmer’s access information on television, 38.04% of the farmers rely on radio for agricultural information, 13.04% of the farmers acquire farming information from reading newspapers, 17.39% of the farmer’s extract farming information from the internet and 29.35% of the farmers receive information from the extension agents.

Binary logistics regression results showed that the age, level of education, smartphone information search and preferred method of farming is statistically significant at 5 percent when ran against willingness to adopt e-agriculture using Binary logistic model. The binary logistic regression revealed that the probability of older people to become willing to adopt e-agriculture decreases by 0.0481. Additionally, the regression also showed that as the level of education increases so does the willingness to adopt e-agriculture by 0.05122. Furthermore, binary regression indicated that the probability of vegetable farmers to adopt innovative method of farming increases by 0.013 against willingness to adopt e-agriculture. Factor analysis results revealed that, components 1, 2 and 3 termed as demographic traits, resource needed for marketing and affordability of ICT services respectively. From the study gender of respondents, age, educational level, years of farming experience, household size, access to funds and access to efficient land were found to have a significant relationship revealed by factor analysis. Lastly, do the farmers use the internet for information search, do the farmers have extension services and is there any ICT institution in their area had a significant relationship which was also revealed by factor analysis. While the study illustrated the factors which influence farmers in accessing markets for their vegetables more needs to be done to achieve the use of e-agriculture as a platform to ease market access for smallholder vegetable farmers. Thus, the study recommends that the ICT infrastructure in the area should be improved. Also, it is recommended that extension services and training of extension agents about ICT and e-agriculture through government workshops should be increased. Finally, farmers should be encouraged to use smartphones in order to enhance e-agriculture.