EFFECTS OF FARMERS’ INFORMATION AND ADVICE CENTRE ON FARMER’S LIVELIHOOD IMPROVEMENT

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the selected characteristics of the farmers, to determine their livelihood improvement after involvement in FIAC farm technologies, to explore the relationships between livelihood improvement of farmers with their selected characteristics and to ascertain the problems faced by the farmers in receiving farm technologies and their suggestions to overcome the problems. Data were collected using interview schedule from a sample of 102 farmers out of 400 farmers selected by multistage random sampling procedure from 15 villages of Noongola and Gokul unions of sadar upazila under Bogra district during 15 February to 15 March 2015. Besides the usual descriptive statistical parameter, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) was used for the statistical analysis. The livelihood improvement of farmers from FIAC was determined on 10 selected farm technologies based on livelihood improvement. The highest proportion of farmers livelihood improved by receiving ‘modern cultivation technology of potato’ (LII=282), and followed by ‘seed production and preservation technology of rice’’ (LII=275), ‘irrigation management’ (LII=237), ‘vegetable production technology (Cauliflower )’ (LII=195) and so on. Lowest proportion of farmers livelihood improved by receiving ‘seed production and preservation technology of tomato’ (LII=51) among selected farm technologies. The highest proportion (80.4 percent) of the farmers had medium improvement in livelihood compared to 13.7 percent had high improvement and 5.9 percent had low improvement. The findings revealed that more than three-fourths (93.7 percent) of the farmers had medium to high improvement in livelihood. According to the computed correlation coefficients among the 9 selected characteristics of the respondents farmer’s educational qualification, farm size, family income, organizational participation showed positive significant relationship; age and family size showed negative relationships and innovativeness, extension media contact and perception about FIAC had no significant relationship with livelihood improvement. The most important problem faced by the farmers was ‘lack of training programme’ (73.52 percent). The most important suggestion to overcome the problem mentioned by the farmers was ‘organizing more training program for the farmers’ (68.63 percent).