A Preliminary Investigation of Usage Behaviour of ICT among Agricultural Producers in Selangor

The aim of this study is to investigate the behavior among the Agricultural Producers in terms of ICT Usage in terms of (what, where, when, how often and why) in the state of Selangor. This study is limited to eight (8) commodities such as rice, beef, chicken, mutton, fish, fruits, vegetables and milk in line with the food groups identified in the Malaysian Third National Agricultural Policy (NAP3) food production plan. The methodology used both secondary and primary data. It was conducted within the agriculture sector with assistance from various agencies concerned. A total of 353 respondents were selected where set of structured questionnaires were distributed via face-to-face interviews. The results of this study reveal that the types of ICT usage commonly used among agricultural farmers are Email, Blog, Website and Portal. Further analysis shows that the vegetable and fruit growers used more of these ICT tools more than the other category of farmers. Email is the most popular tool both personal and business. Most of them used it daily and from home. The use of email is among the higher income farmers and the use of government portal is not that popular. Thus the Ministry of Agriculture Malaysia (MOA) has to look into the result of the farmer’s behavior as regard to the usage in order to update an effective means of reaching the agriculture community.