Research On Effects Of China’s Grass-Roots Agro-Tech Extension Informatization

The "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Agricultural and Rural Informatization Development" emphasizes urgent needs for the development of agricultural and rural informatization, and agricultural informatization is the inevitable choice to promote the transformation of traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, to adjust the agricultural development mode, to advance the development of agricultural science and technology level.The empirical researches and theoretical explorations in the new subject of effects of grass-roots agro-tech extension informatization are carried out, on the basis of detailed research about agro-tech extension informatization, under the background of the completion of the latest reform of the national grass-roots agricultural extension system in 21 st Century, in the overall framework of agro-tech extension informatization as the subfield of agricultural informatization, relying on the related research programs conducted by Agricultural Information Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences,by various research methods adopted such as literature metrology, questionnaire, interview, case analysis, principal component analysis, variation coefficient method.This thesis firstly makes clear the origin and connotation of China’s agro-tech extension informatization, and analyses the differences and the connects between agro-tech extension informatization and the application of agricultural information technologies, meanwhile summarizes the meaning and classification of the effects of agro-tech extension informatization as well as several notes to understand this concept. The effect analysis is the evaluation of the actual results, furthermore, the effects of agro-tech extension informatization do not directly equivalent to the significances, influences and functions of agro-tech extension informatization, similarly, effect evaluation is not evaluation of the development status and level of informatization. The meaning of the effect evaluation of agro-tech extension informatization is given as well, and the results of evaluation can be classified into six levels in qualitative perspective, equally, a new concept "The Rate of Effect Achievement" is put forward in quantitative perspective, so the comprehensive judgment can be formed.In the literature review, the researches on the application of information communication technology in agricultural extension in some developing countries are summarized. the domestic researches of agro-tech extension informatization can be divided into three periods and five aspects, and the shortcomings of domestic literature are analyzed, in addition, the research groups are still in flux. Given that there are almost no literature involving the subject about the effects and evaluation of agro-tech extension informatization, this thesis extends to the literature focusing on the influences and effects of agricultural and rural informatization, such researches mainly study the influences of agricultural and rural informatization in one aspect, or the applied effect of a specific information system.As for practice, the effect evaluation of the exemplification and application of the "The Cloud Platform in Grass-roots Agro-tech Extension" is carried out as an example, according to data obtained from the cloud platform, agro-tech extension managerial staff and technicians, also technologydemonstration households. The effect evaluation includes six aspects, and the empirical quantitative evaluation has been conducted through the SAS software to calculate the Rate of Effect Achievement of the cloud platform to be 74%, reaching the expectation level. The aspects which have better performance are: advance of knowledge and skill training, promotion of agricultural information flow,innovation of agro-tech extension methods, improvement of agro-tech extension management; while the aspects which have no ideal efficiency are: agricultural S&T achievement transformation, agricultural price management. All the aspects are also analyzed with the four-sub-divide graph model; in fact, the former five aspects have relatively high positive correlation.Theoretically, on the basis of the effect evaluation of the cloud platform and the analysis of literature and other relevant information, this thesis attempts to do theoretical exploration on effect evaluation of agro-tech extension informatization: the significances of effect evaluation of agro-tech extension informatization are summarized; the difficulties to evaluate and the factors influencing the effects are determined; in the general idea, the contents of effect evaluation are classified into two categories, i.e.the internal effects and the external effects; the effect evaluation indicators system for reference and indicator-determined principles are put forward; several calculating methods about evaluation indicators are introduced; the processes and procedures to evaluate are summarized.The general trend of the prospect of agro-tech extension informatization is clear, moreover, the rapid development has been taking place in recent years, consequently, it must be effective for agro-tech extension system by informatization in the light of overall qualitative judgment. The author encounters many confusions in the course of the study as well, and propose some immature thinking in the study of outlook part. There still a long way not only in the practices of agro-tech extension informatization but also in the theory research of the effect evaluation.