Assessing of Farmers’ Opinion towards Floating Agriculture as a Means of Cleaner Production: A Case of Barisal District, Bangladesh

Abstract

Aims: Bangladesh, as a low-lying country, is vulnerable to global climate change and affected by floods and water logging. Hence, the country needs to adopt sufficient adaptation strategies which are based on local people traditional knowledge and locally available materials; hence, floating agriculture is that type of agriculture. Through this article we examine the floating agriculture related farmers opinion towards floating agriculture as a means of cleaner production Study Design:  A descriptive survey research design is followed for the study and interview schedule is the main data collection instrument of the research. Place and Duration of Study: The study area was Banaripara and Wazirpur Upazila of Barisal District of Bangladesh. Data was collected from the farmers who were involved with floating agriculture. Methodology: A total number of 385 farmers of the two Upazilas were the population and out of them 140 farmers were selected as the sample of the study. The interview schedule was developed according to the objective of the research. We used five points Likert scale to judge the opinion towards floating agriculture. We administered multiple regression analysis using SPSS for finding out the influence of farmers’ socio-demographic characteristics on their opinion towards floating agriculture as a means of cleaner production. Results: The farmers of the study area had moderately to less a favorable opinion (83%) towards floating agriculture as a means of cleaner production. Three of the characteristics of the farmers (eg. their age, family size and training participation on floating agriculture) had an influence on their opinion according to the regression results. Therefore, the higher the listed three characteristics according to the regression result the higher will be the opinion of the farmers towards floating agriculture.     Conclusion: These findings suggest that it is important to explore knowledge and arrange training for the farmers on floating bed preparation, selecting suitable crops, the intercultural operation of crops and so on. Moreover, future research should be carried out on floating agriculture’s role as a means of women and unemployed employment opportunity, community development, and identify challenges of this technique.