COST- BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS OF KAHAROLE UPAZILA OF DINAJPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

A study was carried out to evaluate the benefits and costs of homestead, cropland and orchard agroforestry systems of Kaharole Upazila under Dinajpur District of Bangladesh. An extensive field survey and measurements were conducted during July 2017 to January 2018 at different unions and villages of Kaharole Upazila. A multistage random sampling procedure was followed in this study to select the survey area. A pre-structured questionnaire was used for collecting the benefits and costs data. A total of 60 agroforestry practices including 20 homesteads, 20 orchards and 20 croplands were evaluated for cost and benefit analysis. Normality test of income and cost data was done by Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test. Three years costs and income data were collected from the field survey. Linear regression equation was obtained by using trend line in MS Excel to forecast seven years of gross income and production cost data of different agroforestry systems. Benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was determined upto ten years. Results of the production cost analysis showed that significantly maximum production cost was in orchard agroforestry system (Tk. 98987 per ha.) followed by cropland (Tk. 90238 per ha.) and minimum in homestead system (Tk. 10854 per ha.) in the 1st year. But production cost decreasing trend was recorded in the successive years in all the systems. In case of gross income analysis showed that though initial income was significantly lower in orchard agroforestry followed by cropland and homestead but after tenth year higher income was found in orchard agroforestry system (Tk. 564758 per ha.) followed by cropland (Tk. 251914 per ha) and homestead ((Tk. 234234 per ha) agroforestry system. However the net income indicated that orchard agroforestry system was financially more profitable than cropland and homestead agroforestry systems, but the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was higher in homestead as well as cropland agroforestry systems and lower in orchard agroforestry system. The findings suggest that orchard agroforestry as well as homestead systems are economically more profitable than cropland agroforestry system.