Abstract
The aim of research is to analyze the attitude of farmers in southeast of Ireland to the adoption of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in farming. The research follows mixed method. Mixed method includes survey questionnaire and interview questions for data collection. Mixed method helped to find the attitude of farmers towards technologies and helped to obtain richer content compared to mono method. 60 participants responded to the survey questionnaire and 2 interviews were taken from the expertise of technology in farming and all the participants are from southeast of Ireland. Survey questionnaire included 32 questions in total which covered the topics related to knowledge about technologies and their perception of technologies and interview questions included 10 questions in total which helped to analyze about the perception of farmers, and barriers in adoption of technologies. The research follows survey type of research strategy it allows for both surveys and interviews where surveys gives the stats of farmers, and interview gives in-depth information related to attitude of farmers. Survey type of strategy is time consuming but in return gives in-depth knowledge about the topic. Research follows nonprobability type of sampling, where snowball method is used. Snowball type of sampling is a technique where participants are volunteered rather than chosen. The participants were given the details about research on attitude of farmers towards adopting technologies. Participants were informed about the time it will take, number of questions, sub sections of survey and purpose of the study.
The analyses based on data collection shows that younger generation of farmers have openness towards adopting the technologies, but they don’t know what the process is as lack of knowledge, costs, farm size. The technology made for the farmers most of the times doesn’t work properly and in return they face loss by adopting such technologies. Farmers have idea about technologies but not seen its outcome in reality that is why they are not ready to invest in technologies rather they can use their money elsewhere. The main conclusion of the research, the technologies needed to be improved to show what technology can do for farmers as most of the farmers have an idea about technology but never seen the practical outcome of the technology.
