<aside> ⬆️ back to The ecosystem of 'social agriculture'

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In this section:

Surveying social media users interested in Agriculture in Kenya

We outlined good reasons for focusing on Kenya in our earlier work Examining large scale groups in social agriculture in Kenya. In this section we expand upon these findings with results from a survey of 300+ participants taken from a wide sample of Kenyans working in agriculture using social media. We asked people from a mix of genders, age groups, and occupations including farmers, agronomists and agricultural students. Using the survey we aimed to tackle some of the questions below:

A map showing which regions our 300+ survey participants came from in Kenya (hover over for more info)

A map showing which regions our 300+ survey participants came from in Kenya (hover over for more info)

• How critical is Facebook to everyday agricultural livelihoods in Kenya? We found that Facebook was the most important platform for social agriculture in Kenya, but we know audiences in North America and Europe increasingly want to leave or reduce dependence on Facebook. Is this finding mirrored in our survey results from Kenya?
• How do people value different practices in social agriculture? We've seen that marketing is a dominant activity on large scale Facebook groups (at least by post volume). We also found that information sharing is prominent (particularly information requests). What do users prioritise in their own minds when it comes to marketing versus information sharing?
• What are the perceptions of trust and safety? Facebook has suffered a crisis of trust globally, is this finding reflected in the experience of people using it in relation to their everyday agricultural work in Kenya?
• How do different groups experience social agriculture in Kenya? Is the experience of social agriculture different for men and women? Age groups? Or even types of occupation in agriculture, e.g. farmer vs agronomist?

Notes on our survey method

How we made it — we sent participants a digital survey, built on the microlearning platform Learn.ink. You can see how the survey looked to participants in the example on the right. An engaging conversational user experience was mixed with images and videos to help achieve impressive completion rates. We quickly and efficiently generating 300+ survey completions.

How we shared it — we used a Facebook advertising campaign in Kenya to target users over 18 years of age, living in Kenya with an interest in Agriculture (i.e. our FBinAg audience specification used in earlier analysis). We generated the other half of our total sample of 300+ participants by asking a small group of Kenyan farmers and agronomists working on social media to share the survey with their own networks of agricultural contacts, targeting those that used social media for agricultural purposes.

How we achieved gender parity — we targeted and achieved close to a 50:50 split of male to female users in the survey (we found that surveys delivered via social media campaigns in Kenya to the target audience naturally skewed 70:30 toward men without intervention). To counteract this skew we used two tools: (1) campaigns that exclusively targeted women on Facebook, and (2) asked individuals to source a 50:50 mix of men and women.

Survey example on the microlearning platform learn.ink

[Source: learn.ink farmer survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTH4N4nq_QGuJ1QHeJJw6f3C_EJWHuqIpViuN2c6oEsLWMiWoP2iRpEfIG6VAXDJ1ag4VMmhateI9Se/pubchart?oid=281254995&format=interactive)

Source: learn.ink farmer survey

Our sample occupational mix — we targeted a wide variety of individuals working in agriculture. This was reflected when users described their role in agriculture (as seen in the chart below). The three major occupations of users were:

• Farmers (44%)
• Agronomists (24%)
• Students (14%)

[Source: learn.ink farmer survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTH4N4nq_QGuJ1QHeJJw6f3C_EJWHuqIpViuN2c6oEsLWMiWoP2iRpEfIG6VAXDJ1ag4VMmhateI9Se/pubchart?oid=898517899&format=interactive)

Source: learn.ink farmer survey

How critical is Facebook to everyday agricultural livelihoods in Kenya?

Overall users found that social media has been good for farming - 75% of people said that a time before social media and farming was worse than the current situation, only 7% thought farming was better without social media. This finding was consistent across gender, age and occupations. In addition, when we asked about the general experience of social media people rated it over 4/5 on average across every group.

This point should be re-emphasised for a balanced analysis in what follows:

[Source: learn.ink farmer survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTH4N4nq_QGuJ1QHeJJw6f3C_EJWHuqIpViuN2c6oEsLWMiWoP2iRpEfIG6VAXDJ1ag4VMmhateI9Se/pubchart?oid=122525891&format=interactive)

Source: learn.ink farmer survey

Social media is perceived as a net positive for farming in Kenya by those working in agriculture — that doesn't mean social media is working perfectly (as we'll see below), but there are lessons that should be taken from what is working well (as well as not so well) for agriculture.

[Source: learn.ink farmer survey](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTH4N4nq_QGuJ1QHeJJw6f3C_EJWHuqIpViuN2c6oEsLWMiWoP2iRpEfIG6VAXDJ1ag4VMmhateI9Se/pubchart?oid=989272737&format=interactive)

Source: learn.ink farmer survey