Farmers’ Access to Agriculture Information in an Agriculture Modernization Age: A Case Study of Farmers in the Wa West District, Ghana

Abstract

Information flow in an information age is essential for farmers’ access to best agriculture practices for enhanced productivity. Though, the extant literature has given attention to agriculture information services, not much studies have examined access by farmers in deprived contexts to agriculture information. This study contributes to such a discourse in an information and agriculture modernization age.
A concurrent mixed method approach was adopted for the investigation in order to: a) assess the information needs, modes and sources, as well as challenges in accessing information by the wider farmer population, and b) uncover the underlying reasons behind the peculiar needs and challenges of farmers. Multistage sampling was used to select 395 respondents while probability and purposive sampling were employed to select 5-Farmer Based Organizations (FBOs) for the study. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance were used to analyse the survey data while the qualitative data was used as triangulation and provided further insights into the results of the quantitative data.
The findings show that farmers had a wide range of information needs including pest and disease management information, input dealer information, credit facility information, preservation and storage information, weather information and marketing of produce information. Key sources of information were researchers, non-governmental organizations and family and friends. Limited availability of information on; pest and disease management, prices of farm produce, and standard measurement for agriculture produce were identified as challenges by farmers in accessing agriculture information.
The study concludes that famers’ need for information in an increasing climate variability and deployment of technology in agriculture context, is enormous. However, a multiplicity of factors including low literacy levels, limited access to radio and television affect famers’ access to timely and reliable agriculture information. The study recommends the pursuance of an aggressive rural development strategy with development of information infrastructure as the centre of the strategy to ensure farmers have access to up-to-date, timely and reliable information for informed decision making.