Knowledge and utilization of social media for agricultural information among farmers in Uttar Pradesh

Digital extension programmes have expanded across India on the assumption that a mobile handset can substitute for the field functionary India's advisory system has never had enough of. Whether that substitution works depends on who among the rural population is positioned to use it, and central Uttar Pradesh has offered almost no evidence either way. This study examined how far rice and wheat growers of Kanpur Dehat district know and use social media for farming information, and which socio-economic attributes underlie each behaviour. Two development blocks and ten villages were purposively selected, and twelve social-media-using cultivators were drawn at random from each village, giving 120 respondents interviewed face to face with a structured schedule. Knowledge was scored across thirty-five items covering seven platforms and services; utilization was scored across nine items covering specific farming applications. Data were summarised by frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation, and associations tested by Pearson and Spearman correlation. Average knowledge stood at 18.70 (SD 9.12) out of a possible thirty-five, with over a third of respondents in the high category and a quarter in the low; utilization averaged 5.07 (SD 2.48) out of nine, distributed similarly. Competence clustered around WhatsApp and the Kisan Call Centre, both low-threshold and vernacular, and thinned sharply for registration-based portals such as e-Choupal. Education and annual family income correlated most strongly and positively with both outcomes; material possession, communication media use and social participation carried smaller but significant positive correlations, and age correlated negatively with both; caste, family structure, occupation, landholding and housing pattern showed no significant association with either. Digital engagement among these farmers is therefore uneven rather than absent, shaped only partly by socio-economic standing and more consistently by schooling, income and household resource than by age, caste or landholding alone.