SOCIO-ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF ADOPTION OF SUNFLOWER PRODUCTION BY THE FARMERS OF PATUAKHALI SADAR UPAZILA

Abstract

The major thrust of this study were to determine and describe the socio-economic determinants of sunflower growers, determine the extent of adoption of different practices of sunflower by the growers, explore the contribution of the socio-economic determinants of adoption of different practices of sunflower by the growers. Data were collected from randomly selected 113 sunflower farmers of five blocks of five union under Patuakhali sadar upazila. The selected five (05) blocks namely Bollovpur, Birajala, Morichbunia, kewabunia, Bara Auliapur by using an interview schedule during 17 September to 25 September, 2018. The highest proportion (69.1 percent) of the sunflower growers fell under the medium adoption category, while 21.2 percent had high adoption and 9.7 percent had low adoption of sunflower production technologies. Thus, an overwhelming majority (90.3 %) of the sunflower farmers had medium to high adoption of improved sunflower production technologies. Among the ten hypothesized relationships, five (5) variables namely knowledge, education, family size, extension media contact and organizational participation were found significantly contribution to the adoption of improved practices of sunflower production (Table 4.13) while rest of the variables showed no significant contribution. All the factors jointly contribute 73.7% of the variance of the adoption (R 2 = 0.737). Which were; age, farm size, land under sunflower cultivation, profitability from sunflower production, training in sunflower production technology had no significant contribution.