FARMERS’ AWARENESS ON ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION NEARBY THE RICE MILL AREAS IN DINAJPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

The purposes of the study were to investigate the farmers’ awareness on environmental degradation nearby the rice mill areas, to determine and describe the selected nine characteristics (age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, organizational participation, extension media contact, environmental knowledge and innovativeness) of the farmers; and to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics of the farmers and their awareness on environmental degradation. Data were collected from the farmers of the selected six villages of Auliapur union under Sadar upazila of Dinajpur district during the period of October 12 to November 15, 2017. The sample size of the study was 101 and it was drawn from a population of 1010. The researcher was collected data herself by using a pretested structured interview schedule. Farmers’ awareness on environmental degradation was the focus issue of this study and it was measured by considering six dimensions i.e. greenhouse, global warming, climate change, environment, land related and farming practices were considered for ascertaining the focus issue thus, each dimension contains three questions. Any respondent answering a question correctly could obtain a full score of 1 and for each wrong answer he could obtain a score of zero. The study revealed that the farmers had highest awareness on climate change dimension followed by farming practices, land related, greenhouse, environment and global warming dimension. In case of overall awareness, 57.43 percent of the farmers fell in the medium awareness on environmental degradation category; while 25.74 percent had low awareness on environmental degradation and only 16.83 percent of the respondents were having high awareness on environmental degradation. Farmers’ five selected characteristics namely educational qualification, annual income, extension media contact, innovativeness and environmental knowledge showed positive relationship with their awareness of farmers on environmental degradation. The rest four characteristics i.e. age, family size, farm size and organizational participation fail to show any relationship with their awareness of farmers on environmental degradation.