Are Sri Lankan Farmers Ready to e-agriculture Transformation? Perspective on E-readiness Measurement

Abstract

There is consciousness that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be efficiently used to develop agricultural sector. E-agriculture is vital for supporting the promotion of agriculture products and to have an impact on the living standards of farmers. Before developing any e-agriculture technology, it is needed to measure the e-readiness as it will be an indicator to predict the utilization of technology. Quite a few e-readiness initiatives have been initiated to help developing countries’ agriculture sector. Prior literature, a large variety of e-readiness tools currently exist, using a variety of questions, statistics, benchmarking and historic analyses. However, these indicators come with a particular perspective. The analysis of the literature demonstrates that most of the indicators of ereadiness related to technology infrastructure, human skills, people and accessibility and connectivity. However, the challenge is to construct a comprehensive model that would incorporate all the major driving forces of an economy that would directly effect on the improvement of e-agriculture. This paper provides a first attempt to conceptualize the scale to quantify the e-readiness of farmers in Sri Lanka utilizing the criteria 8Cs. The present study will be useful for policy makers as well as researchers for the measurement of e-readiness of farmers to know their preparedness and ability to use technological devices. The e-readiness measurement will be utilized to evaluate the farming community’s readiness to engage in eactivities such as e-commerce and e-government.