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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
In the present era, new media has become a mainstay of information in the society which includes online and mobile media. Due to improved mobile technology, better internet connectivity and low cost of mobile phones and data plans, penetration of new media is increasing day by day in urban as well as rural India. It has also been providing the best opportunity to farmers to get new knowledge, ideas, information regarding agriculture like weather updates, marketing, crop insurance, government schemes etc. Keeping this in view, the present study is an endeavour to determine the availability and use of new media among farmers of Moga district and to identify the problems faced by them in accessing new media. A total of 180 farmers were randomly selected from the four villages of two blocks of Moga District for data collection by using the stratified random sampling. Out of this total, 45 farmers from each village (15 Marginal, 15 Small and 15 Large farmers) were randomly chosen and they were asked to fill the questionnaires. The results indicated that Majority of respondents had their own mobile phones while sixty per cent of them had availability of internet on their mobiles phones. However, half of the respondents got the weather updates through new media while a few of them were using mobile to make calls to extension experts and to establish link with markets. Language barrier is the most common problem faced by respondents and most of the respondents were unable to understand the technical words used in agricultural apps and websites. That is why, the study recommends that agricultural information available on apps and websites should be in local/vernacular language and technical jargons should be avoided. Furthermore, Co-operative societies should be roped in to create online and whatsapp groups to provide information to member farmers.