Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin, 1959. / Extension Repository Collection. Typescript (carbon copy). Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90).

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / On title page: Master of Philosophy (Information and Knowledge Management). Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The first of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals for 2015 is to “Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger”. Achieving this goal would be aided by having an effective and productive agricultural community. Agricultural organisations assist producers to be more effective in their operation through Commercial Extension Services (CES). Through CES, producers are advised and educated about new agricultural practices, techniques and products. A key component of CES is the provision of relevant information to producers. The problem this research addressed was that producers experience difficulty in accessing the information they require in a timeous, relevant and personalised manner. No suitable framework was found for agricultural organisations to use when designing and implementing an Information Services Platform. The main research objective was to develop and evaluate an Information Services Framework (ISF) for organisations offering information as a CES. The research methodology used to achieve this objective was Design Science Research (DSR). DSR is an iterative methodology with three cycles, namely the relevance, the design and the rigor cycles. The relevance cycle was used to acquire the information required to inform the design cycle. The information was collected by using literature research and empirical studies. The first study, the Producer Information Requirements Survey (PIRS) sought to determine the information requirements of grain producers and was conducted by interviewing grain producers in the Swartland region of South Africa. The second study, the Internet and Mobile Device Usage Survey (IMDUS) investigated the use of the Internet and mobile devices amongst South African producers by means of a national on-line survey. The quantitative and qualitative results of the analysis were used during the design phase to develop the ISF. The design phase of DSR process led to the creation of an ISF for providing Information as a Service (IaaS) in CES. The framework allows for information services to be provided in a manner and form customised to an individual producer’s preferences. The foundation of the framework is that information can be sourced from various sources, internal or external to the organisation and distributed to producers by using a unified platform. During the research, an agricultural organisation, BKB GrainCo used the proposed ISF to develop an Information Services Platform (ISP) to provide information to its producers. BKB GrainCo’s development process included two evaluations. The first evaluation, the Information Preferences Prototype Survey, was intended to test a key component of the framework, the nformation Preferences Profile. The Information Preferences Profile was conceptualized following the PIRS. In the PIRS it was determined that individual producers would prefer to specify what information they would receive, when they required it and have it delivered by using a medium of their choice. The second evaluation of the design phase was a Usability Study. The Usability Study was intended to test the functionality of the system across various technologies. The rigor cycle, following the implementation of BKB GrainCo’s ISP, contained the main evaluation, the Information Services Platform Evaluation. The evaluation was used to test the impact of BKB GrainCo’s ISP on perception of received service. The evaluation used a standardised version of the standardised SERVQUAL instrument specifically adapted in this research to measure the provision of IaaS. The results obtained during the evaluation indicated that the BKB GrainCo’s Information Services Platform was found to be valued by producers and improved the communication services of agricultural organisations. It was inferred from the successful implementation of BKB GrainCo’s ISP and the positive response from producers, after the evaluations, that the developed ISF was suitable for an agricultural organisation to provide CES. The theoretical contributions included underpinning the concept of CES in terms of stakeholder theory. Its underpinning provides justification for agricultural organisations to improve CES – including the provision of information. A second theoretical contribution was the extension of SERVQUAL as an IS theory by developing and validating a dimension designed to test the provision of IaaS. Providing producers with accurate and reliable personalised information has the capacity to improve producers’ ability to make informed decisions. Informed decision making will contribute to having an effective and productive agricultural community; resulting in improvement of agricultural output and contributing to food security and job creation. Improved agricultural output, better food security and job creation are aspects which will contribute toward the attainment of the first of eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals for 2015, which is to “Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger”.

Empirical studies have suggested that agricultural extension can increase agricultural productivity. However, the increase in productivity is dependent on a number of issues. As a result, this particular study was conducted among farmers in order to examine the relationship between the provision of extension services and increased productivity in a regional context. The perceptions of vegetable home gardeners resident in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan area, who participated in the Siyazondla Homestead Production Programme, formed the source of the primary data. The views of these farmers were analysed to determine how extension services affected their performance. The findings revealed that the farmers have a good perception of the extension services, although this negatively correlates with their level of performance. In addition, the data indicate that farmers who had a poor perception of extension services tend to achieve high production while those with a good impression of services had a poor performance. It was however observed that level of education, farming experience and exposure to print media influenced the responses that were captured in the study.

The purpose of the study was to measure the communication between farmers and the Agricultural Extension Service in British Columbia by analyzing the nature and number of contacts, as well as the relationship of such contacts to the socio-economic characteristics of farm operators. Two hypotheses were tested to ascertain whether there were any statistically significant differences in the level and kind of contact with District Agriculturists among farmers of varying socio-economic characteristics. The analytical survey method was used, and the data were collected by personal interviews with 256 farm household heads. The areas studied included Peace River, Northern Tier, North Thompson and Salmon Arm in rural British Columbia. In general, the respondents had similar characteristics to farm operators in other rural areas in the province. The respondents had a median of eight years of schooling, median net farm income of $2,000 to $2,999, and about one half of them had no off-farm jobs. Contacts between the respondents and the District Agriculturist were mainly through impersonal rather than personal sources of information, and the respondents reached by the two types of contact were not the same. The number of respondents who had personal contacts varied from 16 to 35 per cent, while the number obtaining information through the impersonal sources varied from 81 to 93 per cent, depending on the type of contact. The farmers had an average of 3.71 different types of contact during the year 1966. These included an average of 1.05 personal and 2.66 impersonal contacts. Farmers with higher socio-economic status reported more contacts than did lower status farmers. More personal contacts with the District Agriculturist were reported by farmers with more education. There were statistically significant differences between the users of all extension contacts and non-users, with respect to thirteen socio-economic characteristics. Four characteristics, including years of school completed, distance travelled for goods and services, social participation and amount of gross farm income, accounted for 34 per cent of the variation in the use of all types of extension contact combined. Between 13 and 27 per cent of the variation in each individual type of contact was accounted for by differing combinations of socio-economic characteristics. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

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