Progressive and Non-progressive Farmers Apropos Utilizing ICT to Advance Agriculture in Samastipur District of Bihar

In the age of information and communication technology, one receives and transmits information from daylight till night & it also important in the rapid transmission of information to a large audience at a fair price. The current study was conducted in the Samastipur district of Bihar. There are a total of 20 blocks in Samastipur district in which two villages selected from Kalyanpur block were Ramouli and Fulhatta and from Pusa block Harpur and Morsand village were chosen. There were 80 respondents in all, including both progressive and non-progressive respondents who were chosen for the study. Majority of the progressive and non-progressive farmers used radio and television as ICT tools for gaining information to develop the agriculture. None of the respondents were using internet and mobile for gaining any type of information related to agriculture although everyone claims that various portals are available related to agriculture. The media continues to be the primary source of information for Agricultural Extension. Information gained from ICT related to agriculture for progressive farmers mean value (±standard error) was 74.05 (74.05±0.43) whereas, for non-progressive farmers it was 56.03 (56.03±0.47). The z- test explored that there was a signifi cant diff erence between the mean value of progressive farmers i.e., 74.05 and mean value of non-progressive farmers i.e., 56.03 with 'Z' value 28.26 which was found to be positively signifi cant at 1% level with p-value of 1*E-5. From this, it may be inferred that progressive farmers gained far more information about agriculture-related ICT than the non-progressive farmers. By accelerating development and bringing transparency to systems and operations, ICT hold the promise to off er creative solutions to the issues of poverty and inequality among the farmers so it should be given new momentum