Abstract

Access to desirable, sufficient, safe and nutritious food is one of the basic components of the development and health of a society. ICTs represent an important strategy that can be used in attaining food security. The main purpose of this research, performed in 2006 to 2007, was to identify the effectiveness of ICTs in improving the food utilization of Iranian rural households. A descriptive methodology was applied in this research, through questionnaires. The statistical population for the study included 253 agricultural extension experts; from this population, 170 persons were selected. The results showed that, according to the experts’ point of view, the situation of food utilization in Iranian rural households was unsuitable, but that ICTs could play an important role in improving the food utilization. The results of stepwise regressions showed that informing rural people about food, improving decision making, improving the power of acquiring individual information, rural literacy, facilitators and content of old technologies were determined to account for 73% of the variance of the food utilization of rural Iranian households. Moreover, the path analysis technique demonstrated that facilitators had the greatest influence on determining the casual model of improving the food utilization of rural Iranian households (β = 0.899).

Key words: Capabilities, information and communications technologies, food utilization, rural households, agricultural extension experts, causal model.