e-Agricultural Systems: Towards a Human-Centred Framework for e-Readiness and Technology Adoption

Rural communities particularly the farming sector are one of the most innovative in the world but uptake of new information systems to support their daily lives remains slow. In spite of decades of research into system development we still do not have a good understanding of IS innovation adoption in agricultural communities. The motivation for the research came from living in a rural area and observing the working lives of farmers. Initially the Department of Agriculture conducted a study on the adoption of technology amongst rural people, as they were concerned about the slow uptake. Findings from that study provided inspiration to further research the phenomena. The research followed an interpretivist approach to the problem domain interviewing farm families within their own natural settings. Farm families were interviewed irrespective of farm size, enterprise and level of income. Often these characteristics were presented as barriers to technology adoption across farming research. A new framework for information systems development was presented (RooT Model) that could improve the adoption and continued usage of such systems by synthesising across incompatible domains of knowledge to produce an appropriate human-centred solution for rural communities. The primary contribution of the research is the RooT model – the Rural Technology model that allows system designers and developers to analyse and interpret the rural context with respect to technology design and development. This will open up a new avenue of research for information systems development, informing policy in respect of ereadiness of farmers and the wider rural community, both at a national and international level.