Digital Readiness of Vegetable Farmers and Community Development in Selected Areas in the City of Calamba, Laguna, Philippines: Exploring The Nexus

Abstract

Digital readiness plays a crucial role in enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of farmers, which on a wider scale can propel community development (CD). The study determined the relationship between digital readiness and the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of CD through an interview of 102 farmers in the vegetable farming communities in selected barangays in Calamba City, Laguna, Philippines. The methodologies used by Horrigan (2016) and Roberts and Hernandez (2019) were adapted to determine the level of digital readiness of the farmerrespondents, and classified them to: Unprepared, Traditional, Reluctant, Cautious Clicker, and Digitally Ready. Descriptive analysis was performed along with Pearson’s product moment correlation analysis to evaluate the existence of relationship between digital readiness and the dimensions of CD. Fisher’s Exact Probability test was done to determine the relationship between digital readiness and CD. Results revealed that the farmer-respondents are on the average 58 years old, dominated by women (58%), had average household size of 5, and average area cultivated of less than a hectare. Cautious Clickers accounted for 73.53% while those Digitally Ready were 10.78%, and none were Unprepared. Among the six elements of digital readiness, own ability was rated the lowest by the farmer-respondents. The self-rating on CD revealed an average of 3.77 (out of 5.0) with “crisis response” (3.94) as highest and “voicing own opinion” (__) as lowest. Low correlation was noted between digital readiness and the dimensions of CD but Fisher’s Exact probability proved the highly significant relationship between digital readiness and CD.