Mobile devices in agriculture: attracting new audiences or serving the tech-savvy?

Abstract

The latest wave of ICT-innovations are based around mobility (smart phones, tablets, wireless networks etc.). Mobility can be a decisive success factor of ICT-adoption, because of the spatial, local and remote nature of farming. New generation mobile devices can also have a lower barrier to entry in terms of skills and cost for the user/farmer. The question is whether these new devices, especially smart phones and tablets are adopted by the farmers who are already using computers and Internet or they are attracting new audiences as well? The author’s research in Hungary on the supply and demand side of the phenomenon shows that the “agri-app-economy” is still in its infancy, and both the supply and demand side are reflecting the current state and the earlier development of ICT-usage in agriculture. At the moment, new generation of mobile devices are not acting as a tool to overcome earlier and existing barriers of adoption, rather as an indicator of the general level of ICT-use in agriculture. Mobile devices are mainly used by “tech-savvy” farmers, as a general purpose technology – partly because of the lack of relevant applications in agriculture.