Marketing Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour of Smallholder Livestock Farmers in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

This study examined marketing information needs and seeking behaviour among smallholder livestock farmers from the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 150 livestock farmers and analysed using percentages, weighted means for ranking and correlation. The results show a dominance of market price information requirement among farmers (65%), immediate market price information need (38%), high level of need (48%), and a strong reliance on sources such as other farmers (36%), phone calls (24%) and auctions (23%) for market information. In addition to this, the listed demographic characteristics of farmers namely age, sex, education, marital status, household size, income and herd size strongly influenced their information seeking behaviour (p<0.05). Provision of additional sources of market price information, and ensuring that the personal features of farmers are taken into consideration when designing information service  interventions is crucial. Keywords: behaviour, information need, information-seeking, livestock farmer, smallholder