FARMERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE USE OF DOLOCHUN FOR CROP PRODUCTION
Date
2014-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
HAJEE MOHAMMOD DANESH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY, DINAJPUR
Abstract
The main focus of the present study was to investigate the attitude of the farmers towards the
use of dolochun for crop production, to explore relationship between the selected
characteristics of the respondents and their attitude towards dolochun and also to identify
constraints faced by the farmers in adopting dolochun. The study was conducted in three
unions under Domar upazila in Nilphamari district. Data were collected from randomly
selected 104 farmers, (34 percent of the population of 310). The attitude of the farmers
towards the use of dolochun for crop production was examined with 5-point rating scale. Karl
Pearson’s Product Moment correlation coefficient (r) was computed to explore the
relationships between dependent and independent variables. Nine selected characteristics (i.e.
age, educational qualification, family size, farm size, annual family income, training
exposure, organizational participation, extension media contact and agricultural knowledge)
of the farmers constituted the independent variables where farmers’ attitude towards the use
of dolochun for crop production was the dependent variable of the study. The findings
revealed that the majority of the farmers (58.7 percent) had ‘moderately favorable’ attitude
towards dolochun while 22.1 percent and 19.2 percent had ‘highly favorable’ and ‘slightly
favorable’, attitude towards the use of dolochun for crop production, respectively. Correlation
analysis showed that the ‘educational qualification’, ‘training exposure’, ‘organizational
participation’, ‘extension media contact’ and ‘agricultural knowledge’ had positive
significant relationship with their attitude towards the use of dolochun for crop production,
while the ‘age’ and ‘family size’ of the respondent had negative significant relationships with
their attitude towards dolochun to reduce soil acidity and increase crop production. The major
constraints faced by the farmers in adopting dolochun were ‘unavailability of dolochun in
pick period’, ‘lack of knowledge about dolochun’, ‘ignorance of farmers about the advantage
of dolochun’ and ‘lack of training on dolochun application’.
Description
Bangladesh is an agricultural country. The land area of Bangladesh is 147,570 square
kilometers with a population of 15,58,00,000 (BBS, 2014). Agriculture is the single largest
producing sector of the economy and it contributes about 22 percent to the total Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. GDP growth rate of the country mainly depends on
the performance of the agricultural sector. Although due to natural calamities loss of food and
cash crop is almost regular phenomenon. Bangladesh incurs annual loss of 1.81 percent of
GDP due to extreme weather events. Total losses were 2.19 billion dollar a year from 1990 to
2008. Bangladesh scores eight on risk index (Anonymous, 2010).
Keywords
DOLOCHUN, CROP PRODUCTION, FARMERS’ ATTITUDE