Progressive Influence of ICTs Usage on Vegetables Productivity in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

The vegetable production is main part of the cropping pattern of Pakistan but due to pressure of cash crops, its area is restricted by 0.62 million ha. In developing countries, mobile phone is a most thrilling tool of ICTs used for obtaining information. They are speeding up ways in which farmers get, exchange, and deploy information. Increasingly, they enable farmers to focus and extract useful and up-to-date information from social and business networks. By using the Multistage sampling technique tehsils Kot Chutta and Dera Ghazi Khan from district Dera Ghazi Khan were selected through purposive sampling technique, then four union councils from each tehsil and three villages from each union coucil, were selected by random technique. Five farmers from each village were selected to make a total of 120 respondents for the study. Results showed that age has significant and positive relation with productivity of the vegetables in study area. The results further showed significant and positive relation of education with productivity of vegetables in study area. Results of the study disclosed that obsolete and complicated information is major factor that affect the vegetable growers of tehsil Kot chutta with the mean of 2.17 and S.D of 0.732 and 0.932 respectively as compared to vegetable growers of tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan with the mean of 2.07 and S.D of 0.829 and 0.944 respectively. Results showed that lack of skills and lack of knowledge about using mobile phone has positive and significant relation with the productivity of vegetable.