The sources of agricultural information used by farmers of differing socio-economic characteristics

This is a report of the use that farm operators make of twenty-seven different sources of agricultural information and the attitudes that they hold toward these sources. In addition, several concepts are described and delineated in order to precisely define the areas of concern of the study. Personal interviews were conducted with a stratified random sample of 147 farm operators in the County of Two Hills in the province of Alberta. A primary purpose was to determine any associations that might exist between seventeen selected socio-economic characteristics of the farm operator and his use of and attitude toward each source of agricultural information included in the study. The study also suggests that farmers may be grouped according to their information seeking activity. It presents a model for such groupings and identifies some of the socio-economic characteristics which may describe the persons in each group. Scaling techniques were used and correlation coefficients were calculated for all possible associations. The data were processed at the Computing Centre at the University of British Columbia. The study reports the associations existing between each socio-economic characteristic and the use of all sources of information as well as attitude toward each source of information. Each source of information was examined with respect to the use of the other sources of information. Attitudes were also examined on a similar basis. The final examination of data identifies 3 groups of respondents based on their information seeking activity. It also determines that certain socio-economic characteristics may be useful to identify these groups.Land and Food Systems, Faculty ofGraduat