Assessing Farmers’ Digital Literacy and Its Impact on Sustainable Agricultural Development through Social Media

With the era of intensive digitalization, social media has acquired the status of an essential source to share agriculture-related knowledge, network, and promote innovation among farmers. This paper was conducted to evaluate the perception and usage habits of social media in agriculture, as well as the socio-economic, behavioural and psychological factors that are at play with its usage.The study was carried out in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh. Information was gathered on farmers and analysed through frequency, percentage, correlation and multiple regressions. The findings reported that most respondents had a medium level of perception (65.00%). The role of social media in learning about new farming practices (77.50%), problem-solving (73.33%) and connecting to agricultural institutions (74.17%) were well-known to farmers, whereas the use of social media to purchase inputs (46.67%), diagnosing pests (43.33%) and monitoring market prices (40.00%) was still few. The variables relating to the use of ICT, CPS with social media, scientific orientation, information-seeking behaviour and innovative mindsets showed significant contributions to effective use of social media in agricalture, although majority of socio-economic variables were less significant. Other major limitations cited in the study are substandard internet connection, language barriers and lack of good technical expertise that reduces optimal use. The results highlight the importance of specific measures in digital skills advancement, internet infrastructure, and creation of appropriate, topical farming information to empower farmers and make the social media perform more in creating sustainable agricultural development.