Assessment of current status on smart farming technologies in Batticaloa District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Smart farming is an evolving technology that concentrated on improving productivity and rural development. The study was aimed to assess the present situation of farming society towards the e-agriculture and the relationship between different demographic factors of respondents with the usage of ICT application in agriculture in Eravur Pattu, Batticaloa District in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the primary data were composed of randomly selected 1580 farmers between February and June 2019 using a structured questionnaire survey. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, the Chisquare test, and multiple regression analysis to evaluate the awareness of farmers’ awareness of e-Agriculture among the independent variables. The farming community’s demographic characteristics showed that 53.2% of respondents belonged to the 45-64 age group. It was also revealed that only 5.1% of respondents were illiterate in this study region. According to this study, 75.9% of farmers have not awareness of e-agricultural concepts in the study area. The relationship between farmers’ age and smartphone and Internet usage showed a negative association. The multiple regression analysis showed the positive relationship between education level and the training which influences the ICT utilization on e-Agriculture. In contrast, a negative relationship was observed on the age that influenced the awareness of e-Agriculture. The study results revealed that younger farmers (Less than 25 years) are using more ICT tools than old aged farmers in the study area