farmers' attitude towards sustainable agricultural practices

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Ghosh and Hasan.The application of modern agricultural science and technology has contributed toincrease productivity of agriculture in the last half-century. The successes of agriculture,however, have been accompanied by many ecological problems. Today, both rural andurban inhabitants feel threatened by dangers posed to the environment by modernagricultural practices such as the heavy use of chemicals. An alternative farming strategycalled sustainable agriculture promises remedies to the problems created by industrializedchemical based agriculture, if sustainable agriculture can be shown to be viable andbecome widely accepted (Roling and Wagemakers, 2002).Currently, the world shows extensive worries on the destructive effects of advancedagricultural technologies on the environment, natural resources and long termsustainability of agronomy systems. Soil degradation, erosion, water pollution, excessiveuse of chemicals, waste of water, decreasing ground water tables, destruction of naturalhabitats for wildlife and insects and pests resistance against insecticide and pesticide areonly a few of the concerns expressed by environmentalists, ecologists, agriculturalprofessionals, policy makers, farmers and public (Leeuwis, 2004; Al-Subaiee et al., 2005).Despite these environmental effects at many places, the modern agriculture has beeninvolved in many economic and social changes both in the industrial and developingcountries. Sustainable agriculture, as a managerial philosophy and a system that providesagricultural needs of both present and future generations has raised as a major challengeof the 21 st century to meet these complications and natural and human difficulties; that is,agriculture should be consume less and be sustainable more (Williams, 2000; Qamar, 2002;Rasul and Thapa, 2003; Shariate and Hosseyni, 2003; Leeuwis, 2004; Shahvali and Abedi,2005; Ahmadvand et al., 2005).Sustainable agriculture’ as “farming that makes the best use of natural goods and serviceswhile not damaging the environment. It minimizes the use of no renewable inputs(pesticides and fertilizers) that damage the environment or harm the health of farmersand consumers. In addition, it makes better use of the knowledge and skills of farmers”(Duesterhaus, 1990).The concept of sustainable agricultural practices is of concern forfarmers, extension agents, agricultural education teachers, and others working inagricultural related occupations. Sustainability requires a holistic approach in order tounderstand the whole as an aggregation of interwoven parts working together (Hartfieldand Karlen, 2001). The performance of sustainable agricultural practices is judged not interms of how each practice works separately, but in terms of how the individual practicesfit together and relate to each other, and how the systems that result relate to theirenvironment and to other systems in the environment (Roling and Wagemakers, 2002). Theultimate goal or the ends of sustainable agriculture is to develop farming systems that areproductive and profitable, conserve the natural resource base, protect the environment,and enhance health and safety, and to do so over the long-term. Considering the abovementioned facts, the study was undertaken with the following objectives:1. To determine the selected socio-demographic characteristics of farmers;2. To determine the attitude of farmers towards sustainable agriculture;3. To explore the relationship between selected characteristics of the farmers andtheir attitude towards sustainable agriculture.MethodologyLebutala and Ichali union of Jessore Sadar upazila of Jessore district were selected as thelocale of the study. All farmers of Tejrol village of Lebutala union and Rajapur village ofIchali union were the population of the study. At first two villages, Tejrol and Rajapur wereselected randomly from two unions. Total number of farm families in Tejrol and Rajapurwere 334 and 267 respectively. 50 farmers from Tejrol village and 40 farmers from Rajapurvillage were selected as sample following two-stage proportionate random samplingtechnique. Thus the total number of sample respondents was 90. Face to faceinterviewing by using structured interview schedule was used to collect data and theentire process of data collection were done from February to March, 2012.Measurement of dependent variableFarmers’ attitude towards sustainable agricultural practices was considered as thedependent variable of this study. Farmer’s attitude was measured by asking his opinion228http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/
Sustainable Agricultural Practicesupon 25 attitudinal statements on sustainable agricultural practices. 5-point Likert typescale was used for this purpose. Score 5 was assigned to strongly agree statements, while4, 3, 2 and 1 was assigned for agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree statementsrespectively. In case of negative attitudinal statement, reverse score was assigned toeach response. Based on the computed scores the respondents were classified into threecategories according to Salawat et al., 2013, i.e., low attitude (up to 82 scores), mediumattitude (83 to 106 scores) and high attitude (above 106 scores).Measurement of independent variablesThe independent variables of this study were farmer’s age, education, family size, farmsize, annual income, farming experience, cosmopoliteness, extension contact, andknowledge. Age of a farmer was measured on the basis of actual age of his life andexpressed in years. The education was measured by the number of years of schooling.Family size was measured by the total number of members including the farmer himself,spouse, children and other permanent dependents who lived together as a family unit.The total land area possessed by the farmer under farm and homestead was the basis ofmeasuring farm size in this study and it was expressed in acre. The yearly income of thefarmer from different sources was the annual income of the respondent. Farmingexperience was determined by the duration of experience of a farmer in agriculturalworks and expressed in years. Farmer’s visit to different places outside of his own villagewas the basis of cosmopoliteness score measurement. For measuring extension contact ofthe farmer, a four-point scale i.e, not at all, rarely, occasionally and frequently was usedand appropriate weights were assigned to quantify the variable. Twenty one questionswere selected in the interview schedule for measuring farmers’ knowledge on sustainableagricultural practices. The score assigned against each item was 2 for fully correct answer,1 for partial correct answer and 0 for incorrect answer. Weight for responses on the 21questions of a farmer were added together to get his score for on sustainable agriculturalpractices.Necessary tables and categories were used to classify the data considering their natureand distribution. As per the objective of the study, statistical tests like frequency counts,percentage, mean, standard deviation were used for analysis and interpretation of data.Correlation coefficients were used for hypothesis testing and 0.05 and 0.01 levelprobabilities were used as the basis for exploring relationship between the concernedvariables throughout the study.Results and DiscussionSelected characteristics of the respondentsData displayed in the Table 1 indicated that the young aged constituted the highestproportion (48.9.%) of the respondent followed by middle and old aged category with anaverage of 38.92 years. 34.44% of the respondents got primary level education which wasthe highest followed by Secondary level, no education and Tertiary level education. Thelargest farm size was 5.26 acre with an average of 1.18 acre. The highest proportion(85.56%) of the farmer had small farm size followed by medium and large farm sizerespectively. The number of family members of the farmers ranged from 2 to 10 with anaverage was 5.76. The income of the farmers ranged from Tk. 30000 to Tk. 110000, theaverage was Tk. 55777.78. Farming experience scores of the farmers could range from 5 to45 years, with an average was 20.92 years. The highest proportion (45.6%) of the farmer fellin medium experience category followed by high experience and low experience. Themaximum (45.6%) of the farmers had low cosmopoliteness followed by high mediumcosmopoliteness. Most of the respondents had low extension contact (82.2%) followed bymedium and high extension contact. Knowledge scores on sustainable agriculturalpractices of the farmers ranged from 8 to 41, with an average was 20.1. The highestproportion (51.1%) of the farmers fell in low knowledge category compared to mediumand in high knowledge category.229http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/
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