USE OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERIES BY THE FARMERS

Abstract

Farm mechanization plays an important role in food production in Bangladesh. Today, increased mechanization makes it easier to meet the demand for food production which emphasized the importance of using agricultural machineries by the farmers for their farm operations. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (i) to describe the selected characteristics of the farmers; (ii) to determine the extent of use of agricultural machineries by the farmers; and (iii) to determine the contribution of the selected characteristics of the farmers to their use of agricultural machineries. The study was conducted in four randomly selected villages of Kurigram sadar upazila under Kurigram district. A structured interview schedule was used to collect data from 104 randomly selected respondents during 10 July to 10 August, 2021. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression were used for the analysis. Descriptive statistics showed that most of the farmers (89.7 percent) had medium use of agricultural machineries while only 7.7 percent had low and 2.6 percent had high use of agricultural machineries for their farming operations. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the farmers’ level of education, farm size, exposure to agricultural extension media contact and benefit of using machineries had positive and significant contribution to their use of agricultural machineries. However, age, annual family income, farming experience, organizational participation and knowledge on agricultural machineries had no significant contribution to their use of agricultural machineries. It can be concluded that higher level of education, farm size, agricultural extension media contact and benefit of using machineries would encourage farmers towards use of agricultural machineries. Therefore, policymakers should emphasize particularly on those identified factors in order to promote mechanized agriculture.