Towards the digitalization of poultry industry in Nigeria: An investigation of farmers’ knowledge and practices

The array of digital technologies portends huge significance for up-scaling poultry enterprises for optimized efficiency and productivity. The study investigated poultry farmers’ knowledge and the technicality of their practices concerning digital technologies. Members of the Poultry Farmers Association of Nigeria (PFAN) in Osun State capital, Osogbo were randomly sampled during their periodic meetings for data collection. Through the administration of well-structured questionnaires, data collected from a total of 136 farmers were employed for the study. The collected data were analyzed with descriptive and multivariate regression analyses. Many (78.7%) had poor knowledge of the use of 3D printers for machine repairs and only 12.5% had good knowledge of blockchain technology for product tracking in the supply chain. Most poultry enterprise operations were serviced manually by farmworkers while only 18.4% facilitated record-keeping with computers. Farmers’ knowledge and practices in digital poultry management (R2 = 0.61, 0.59) were significantly influenced by the enterprise characteristics like labour strength (b = 1.97, b = 1.09). In conclusion, technological and digitalization lag remains in the poultry industry and this is espoused within the confines of the predominant small-scale enterprise features. Thus, research and development (R&D) should be policy-guided to enable poultry farmers’ sensitization and empowerment with locally adapted and socio-economically appropriate digital technologies. This reveals the incapacitated diffusion of the widely available digital technologies to infiltrate grassroots poultry systems.