FARMERS' COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOUR IN RECEIVING INFORMATION ON IMPROVED RICE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to explore the farmers' communication behaviour in receiving information on improved rice production technologies and to determine the relationships between farmers' personal characteristics and their communication behavior. Data were collected from 120 randomly selected respondents of the two selected villages of l3arkhada Union under Kushtia sadar Upazia of Kushtia District. Data were collected by using an interview schedule from the farmers during I to 30 March, 2006. Five rice production technologies and 18 communication media were considered for measuring the communication behavior. Co-efficient of correlation was used to explore the relationship between the concerned variables. According to media use index, the first five media recognized most important among the IS communication media were progressive farmer (1220). neighbours (1218). friends (1064), sub assistant agriculture officer (924) and group discussion (694) in receiving information on rice cultivation. However, the last five communication media were NOO workers (51), agricultural fair (82), newspaper (113), television (199) and method demonstration (227). Among five technologies of rice cultivation, the hiszhest extent of communication media was used for pest management practices for which media use index was 2825 and it was followed by recommended fertilizer dose (2284), modem varieties (1601), recommended seed rate (1289) and recommended irrigation (1171) The range of extent of use of communication media by a fainter was 22 to 135 with a mean of 76.42. On the basis of use of communication media, farmers were classified into three categories where 66.67 percent were occasional and 33.33 percent were frequent users. None of the rice growers was found to be regular user of communication media. Education, cosmopoliteness, innovativeness, attitude towards agricultural technology and agricultural knowledge had significant positive relationship with the communication behaviour of the farmers However, age of the respondents had signilicant negative relationship while, family size, farm size, annual income, organizational participation and problem confrontation of the farmers had no relationship with their communication behaviour.