Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have always mattered in agriculture too. In day-to-day practices of agriculture and allied sectors, the farmers often share their information. Changing weather patterns, soil conditions, pests and diseases always throw challenges to small and marginal farmers. So, the farmer needs up-dated information to cope with and even benefit from these changes. In the developing countries like India, where agriculture still plays a crucial role (over 58% of the rural households depend on agriculture as their livelihood) and the rising population from 1027 million to 1419 million during 2001-16 (a total rise of 38 percent or 1.3 percent per year) pose a lot of pressure on land and other resources to meet the food security needs on one hand and to meet the challenges of globalization on the other. Understanding and addressing these challenges are very crucial, in which ICT can play a major role. With the booming mobile, wireless, and Internet industries, ICT has found a foothold even in poor marginal and smallholder farms and in their activities. The survey conducted among the 120 farmers in Srikakulam district in India revealed that, ICT has revolutionized the agriculture in the modern days. Production and marketing information is accessed by 91% of the sample farmers through mobile in 2015, where it was only 5% in 2005. The extent of use of mobile phones by the farmers varied with the decision to be taken by them like Harvesting, packing, and storing (94%), Selling Decision (91%), Seed purchase (89%), Application of fertilizers and pesticides (88%) and Land preparation and planting (84%), other package of practices (77%). The farmers further opined that, ‘Voice’ was the dominating source of communication (96%) compared to Short Message Service (SMS) (only 27%) and Internet access (10%), as majority are illiterate. The use of camera (71%), Bluetooth (33%), Radio (61%) TV (41%) are the other means of sharing the information. In this context of importance of ICTs in Indian agriculture, greater attention justifies about the applications of ICT’s to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth of the farming population.

The study was conducted to determine the knowledge and practices of vegetable farmers in Hanoi, Vietnam in controlling mites, and their attitude towards N. longispinosus as biological control agent against T. urticae on green bean. The field surveys conducted in Tang My and Son Du hamlets, two of the largest vegetable production areas in Dong Anh district, show that the respondents in Tang My who had training on the vegetable IPM program had higher knowledge on green bean pest management and knew better about natural enemies and biological control than the ones without training in Son Du. However, both groups of respondents did not have enough knowledge on spider mite control and most of them did not know or hear about predatory mite before. Hence, 40 percent of the respondents said they would not use predatory mites, and 33 percent were still uncertain whether they will adopt this biological control. The paper suggests some recommendations to enhance farmers’ use of biological control against mites on green beans.