How Do Dairy Farmers Communicate With the Government?: A Case Study in the Northwest of Spain

Introduction

Nowadays, the ICT have become essential tools for communication, education, entertainment or online shopping, among others; which turned them into a necessity (Warf, 2019), confirmed by the strategy Europe 2020, where the dependence on the digital media in our everyday life, both social and professional, public and private, is acknowledged and highlighted (Costa & Murphy, 2019). Concerning the public communication, the new technologies have remodelled the methods of communicating of the government in the form of web platforms (Tucci & Poulin, 2015; Kumar- Pamu & Manoharan, 2019). In the specific case of Spain, as reflected in the administrative procedure law of European character (BOE-A-2015-10565), all legal entities are obliged to interact with the Public Administration through the use of the government web platforms. This situation affects rural companies, more specifically dairy farms, which are the topic of the present study.

Despite the clear importance that the ICT acquire in every aspect, there are still problems concerning their knowledge and usage, which are closely linked to the lack of connectivity and inclusion (Schenk & Wolf 2000; Correa & Pavez, 2016; Salemink 2016; Salemink et al., 2017; Pavez et al., 2017; Freeman et al., 2019; Kante et al., 2019; Magnusson & Hermelin, 2019; Awad, 2019; Park et al., 2019; Stocker & Whalley, 2019; Tiwari et al., 2019; Young, 2019; Vázquez-López et al., 2021; Vázquez-López & Marey-Perez, 2021). These factors are accountable for a new type of inequality known as “digital divide” (Salemink, 2016; Salemink & Strinjker, 2016; Inkinen et al., 2018; Townsend et al., 2018). This affects mainly rural areas, as shown in studies conducted by Townsend et al. (2015) in Scotland concerning the importance of ICT for rural businesses. Besides, there are factors such as risk tolerance, education, income and social media which contribute to the producer’s management decisions, which suggests that economically or socially vulnerable people have less opportunities of adopting new technologies in comparison with more favoured farmers (Kuhl, 2020).

In regard to the limiting problems to the adoption and use of new technologies, it is worth mentioning the studies carried out by Bowen and Morris (2019) about farmers in rural areas in Wales, where the results show the existing problems in terms of technology adoption, since many of them do not have an internet connection, or in spite of having it the speed is limited, resulting in the lack of computing skills, low levels of adoption and, above all, it means a barrier to business growth. Moreover, it is important to take into account that there are still many farmers who, in order to carry out certain procedures, prefer face-to-face conversation, since it allows a communication with immediate feedback and also the recognition of facial expressions (Von Hobe et al., 2019).