LIVELIHOOD IMPROVEMENT OF THE FARMERS THROUGH PARTICIPATION IN INTEGRATED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY PROJECT

Abstract

The study aimed at exploring the livelihood improvement of the participants and finding out the relationships between selected characteristics of the farmers and their livelihood improvement. Data were collected by using a pre-tested interview schedule from the farmers of four union Alampur Taragonj upazila of Rangpur district. Data were collected from 110 sample farmers selected by multistage random sampling procedure from a population of 220 IAPP participants from 12 October to 20 November, 2016. Nine selected characteristics of the IAPP participants are: age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, training experience, agricultural knowledge, extension media contact and organizational participation were considered as the independent variables, where livelihood improvement of the farmers constituted the dependent variable. Livelihood improvement of the farmers was measured by 5 point rating scale. Among the farmers, 59.1 percent belonged to high status of livelihood improvement status while 32.7 percent of them had medium status of livelihood improvement and 8.2 percent had low status of livelihood improvement. The variation regarding different assets of livelihood was minimum, the highest status of livelihood improvement was observed in case of social capital and it was the lowest in case of natural capital. Five (5) out of nine (9) selected characteristics of the farmers are education, training experience, agricultural knowledge extension media contact and organizational participation had significant positive relationships with their livelihood improvement. Rests of the characteristics are age, family size; farm size, annual income had no significant relationship with their livelihood improvement.