Relationship Between Level Of Education Of Farmers And Use Of Information And Communication Technologies In Marketing Of Farm Produce By Small Scale Farmers In Manga Sub-County Kenya

Limited access to accurate and timely market information continues to be a major impediment in the marketing of farm produce by farmers in Africa and in Kenya especially in Manga Sub-County Nyamira County. This limited access to market information has led to high cost of transaction and emergence of middlemen. Information and Communication Technologies ICTs have the potential to assist in addressing this problem by creating awareness linking and distributing information on marketing. It is evident that farmers in Kenya have focused their attention in acquisition of ICT resources because of widespread coverage of mobile telephony low call rates affordable data bundles increasing internet connectivity and other forms of ICT applications for example the M-pesa services with little application in marketing. This study aimed to determine the relationship between level of education of farmers and use of ICTs in marketing of farm produce by small scale farmers in Manga Sub-County in Nyamira County Kenya. Descriptive research design was adopted in the study. The target population of the study was 11040 commercial farmers in Manga Sub-County from which a sample size of 109 small scale farmers was selected using stratified random sampling technique. A questionnaire administered to farmers in the Sub-County was used to collect data. Validity of the instrument was enhanced by subjecting the instrument to examination by three experts in the Department of Agricultural Education and Extension of Egerton University. Analysis of piloting results using Cronbachs coefficient alpha method yielded a reliability index of 0.896 indicating the instrument was reliable. The collected data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics used were the frequency and percentages. Pearsons correlation coefficient analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used in data analysis. The hypothesis was tested at a significance level of 0.05. Findings of the study identified that high level of education of farmers significantly influenced the use of ICTs in marketing farm produce by small-scale farmers in Manga Sub-County. This study recommends improvement in level of education of farmers in order to improve the farmers use of ICTs in marketing of farm produce in the study area.