IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY ON GROWTH OF AGRICULTURE SECTOR

Information technology is the extract of human’s 2000-year knowledge and experience. Information technology has been seriously taken under consideration in a new form during the recent years. In this juncture of time, many countries have reached to the conclusion that development of information technology is regarded as an important factor in their economic growth and development. Information and communications technology have manifested the ability to act effectively for empowering and strengthening the agriculture sector. Hence, application and determination of the specific roles which this technology can encompass with respect to progress and effectiveness in agriculture sector deserve essential attention. Agriculture sector requires utilization and deployment of information technology for improvement of efficiency in production and marketing of the agricultural crops as information technology have provided opportunities for development of agriculture sector through empowerment and unification of access to the available knowledge and information. The present paper analyzes impact of information and communications technology on growth of agriculture sector during 1972-2008 by depicting a suitable model for Iran’s agriculture sector. The model benefits from Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Method. Estimation results indicate that information and communication technology have positive and significant effect on the growth of agriculture sector.