Abstract:
In Sri Lanka, potato farmers commonly face uncertainties regarding supply and
demand. Therefore, most of the farmers used to take their decisions based on the
rough measurements, or informal/formal recommendations. This leads to occur
over-supply resulting food wastage and price dropdown. To overcome this
situation, this study was conducted to identify the potential on providing future
demand and supply information through mobile-based information system in
planning stage. This research study was conducted in Nuwara Eliya district by
selecting 50 potato farmers using Snowballed sampling method. Then, selected
farmers’ willingness was captured by using pretested questionnaire. Collected
data were analyzed by using one-way ANOVA. According to the results of one way ANOVA, age of the farmers (p= 0.05), gender (p = 0.05) and education level
(p= 0.000) showed the strong significant relationship with willingness to have
mobile-based demand and supply forecasting system while farmers’
employment status (p = 0.080) and their farming type (p = 0.068) showed the
marginal significant relationship. Moreover, when comparing the mean values
within the categories, 20-30 age group (Mean = 4.80) in age category, male
farmers (Mean = 4.36) in gender category, farmers educated up to GCE A/L
(Mean = 4.75) in education category, farmers who engaging other sectors as
their fulltime occupation and doing part time potato farming (Mean = 4.67) in
employment status category, and farmers doing contract farming (Mean = 5.00)
in farming type category showed the highest mean values within the category
that they belonged. Therefore, these farmers tend to have mobile-based demand
and supply forecasting system for their decision-making process than the other
farmers . Accordingly, there is a high potential to introduce mobile-based
demand and supply forecasting system for male, educated farmers up to GCE A/L
who belong to 20-30 age group, who do part time potato farming, and who
engaged in contract farming at the initial stage. These findings provide promising
avenues for future research related to other crops as well in this regard.
