Exploring the effect of ICT-based climate smart portal on dairy farmers' knowledge against climate resilient practices

The current investigation seeks to assess the knowledge of dairy farmers with the effectiveness of an information communication technology (ICT) based dairy information portal against the adoption of climate-resilient dairy farming practices in the vulnerable district of Madhya Pradesh, India. The study was conducted following an exploratory research design with stratified random sampling. The study was conducted on dairy farmers of four districts selected as their vulnerability towards climate change indicators from low to very high categories. Initially, the reliable and valid knowledge test was developed and then introduced among the respondents for pre-test knowledge scores. After that, a demonstration of the climate-smart dairy information portal (DIP) at the farmer’s field was performed. Finally, the post-test knowledge score was assessed. The findings of the study depicted that farmer’s knowledge was significantly increased after exposure to DIP. Indicated by a significant value of Wilcoxon Z=8.16, p<0.01, and t-test t=11.223, p<0.01. In this research, efforts were made to test the pre and post-exposure knowledge level of respondents on the developed knowledge test. After exposure to DIP, more than half i.e. 37.50 and 39.37 percent of the respondents had a medium to a high level of knowledge regarding climate-resilient dairy farming practices. The use of the ICT-based tools with local content and language effectively improved dairy farmers’ understanding of climate-resilient practices indicating its potential tools in extension systems to improve literacy among rural communities.