Development of a Mobile Application for Agricultural Market Price Monitoring Among Smallholder Farmers in Benue State

Access to real-time market price information remains a significant challenge for smallholder farmers in rural Nigeria, particularly in the North Central geopolitical zone. This study presents the development of a mobile application designed to monitor and disseminate agricultural commodity prices to farmers in Benue State. The research was motivated by documented evidence that price information asymmetry between farmers and middlemen contributes to income losses among rural producers. A needs assessment survey was conducted among 200 farmers across three local government areas in Benue State, revealing that over 78 percent lack access to current market prices before making selling decisions. The application was developed using Android Studio with a Firebase real-time database backend, allowing local agricultural extension agents to upload price data from major markets in Makurdi, Gboko, and Otukpo. Key features include offline price caching, SMS-based price alerts for users without smartphones, and a multilingual interface supporting Tiv and English. User acceptance testing conducted with 50 farmers recorded a system usability scale score of 82.4, indicating high acceptability. The study concludes that affordable mobile technology can bridge market information gaps and improve the bargaining power of smallholder farmers. Recommendations include collaboration between the Benue State Ministry of Agriculture and telecommunications providers to subsidise data access for registered farmers. Keywords: mobile application, agricultural market prices, smallholder farmers, Benue State, information asymmetry.