Effect of Information Technology Communication (ICT) on women farmers’ utilization of soya bean in conflict prone areas of Taraba State Nigeria

Abstract

This research examines the effect of (ICT) component on women farmers’ utilization of Soya bean in conflict prone areas of Taraba state. ICT components were used to disseminate Soya beans packages to women farmers with the aim of providing solutions to nutritional deficiency among children and women farmers in flash points. Villages where malnutrition predominates after the conflict were purposively selected. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 360 women farmers from various women groups in the village. Data were collected using interview schedule, and analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis. Majority (95%) and 75.2% of women farmers received Soya beans information from the combination of radio and extension agents as
well as combination of radio and telephone respectively. It was found that interpersonal ICT and print media made maximum contribution towards utilization with a positive regression coefficient. The 6 combination of ICTs’
components jointly explained 88% of variation in utilization level of Soya bean packages. Soya milk and fortification of Soya bean with locally prepared baby feed recorded the highest utilization scores of 7.5 and 6.8
respectively. There is significant difference among utilization mean scores of Soya bean packages with Least Significant Difference of 5.4 . Hence, there is need to promote combination of ICTs’ component in the
dissemination of technologies to farmers.