TRIBAL WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN BIOCHAR PRODUCTION AND PRESERVATION

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to determine the participation of tribal women in Biochar production and preservation. Data were collected from the tribal women at Daudpur and Mahamudpur union of Nawabganj upazila under Dinajpur district, through personal interview. A pretested and structured interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents during 16 August to 17 September 2017 from a sample of 102 tribal womens. Descriptive statistics are estimated to explain the selected characteristics of the tribal women. Co-efficient of correlation (r) was computed in order to explore the relationship between the eleven selected characteristics including age, educational qualification, family size, farm size, annual income, cosmopoliteness, fatalism, training received, credit received, and extension media contact and their participation of biochar production and preservation. Among ten selected characteristics of tribal women, annual income, training received, credit received and extension media contact of the respondents had positive and significant relationship with their participation in Biochar production and preservation. The rest of the characteristics of the tribal women such as age, educational qualification, family size, farm size, cosmopoliteness and fatalism had no any significant relationship with their participation in Biochar production and preservation. Findings showed that majority of the tribal women (41.2%) had low participation compared to 30.4% had medium and 28.4% had high participation in Biochar production and preservation. The top ranked problem (1st) faced by the tribal women in Biochar production and preservation was found ‘difficulty in fuel collection’. The lowest proportion of tribal women faced problems on ‘market unavailability of Akha Chula’.