Effectiveness of Agricultural Information and Communication Center in Technology Transfer to the Farmers in Bangladesh

Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in information dissemination in agriculture sector is getting popular day by day especially in technology transfer to the farmers. While various forms of ICT devices and centers abound in Bangladesh today. The recent innovation of agricultural information delivery developed by the government initiative started with 20 Agricultural Information and Communication Center (AICC) and planned to increase the numbers to cover most of the Agro-Ecological Regions of the country. In connection to this issue, this study was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of Agricultural Information and Communication Centers (AICC) in technology transfer to farmers. Besides, important factors were identified those could contribute to farmers’ understanding on effectiveness of AICC. The study was conducted in five sub-districts of Mymensingh district in Bangladesh. One hundred AICC users were interviewed using a pre-tested questionnaire to collect the data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the collected data. More than one-third (37%) of the farmers perceived that effectiveness of AICC in technology transfer was high while 38% of the farmers perceived as “moderately effective” and 25% perceived as “low effective”. Farmers' characteristics such as education, farm size, annual family income, organizational participation, extension contact, awareness on ICT facilities, access to ICT facilities, knowledge on ICT, and training received on ICT had significant positive relationship with their perceived effectiveness of AICC while age and household size had negative and insignificant relationship with effectiveness of AICC. The influential factors that affecting the effectiveness of AICC were education, annual family income and knowledge on ICT were confirmed by the multiple regression models. This model also explained that these three explanatory variables together explained 81.2% variation in perceived effectiveness of AICC while knowledge on ICT explained 70% variation in perceived effectiveness of AICC. Lack of operational knowledge of computer, lack of training facilities on ICT, low awareness among rural farmers were identified as the major constraints of using AICC facilities. However, extension policy makers should take into consideration above findings and provides ICT training to the users, developing ICT infrastructure, adequate maintenance of the center facilities etc. that influence to make AICC effective and sustainable.