Green Global
Foundation   Journal
...an emerging window for scientific research and publication across the globe

FARMERS’ COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOR IN RECEIVING INFORMATION ON IMPROVED RICE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES (Pages : 28 - 33)

The main objectives of the study were to (i) determine and describe the extent of use of communication media by the farmers in receiving information on improved rice production technologies and (ii) determine the relationship between the individual characteristics of the farmers and their communication behavior in receiving that information. Data were collected from 120 randomly selected respondents of the two villages of Barkhada Union under Kushtia Sadar Upazilla of Kushtia District by using interview schedule. Five rice production technologies and 18 communication media were considered for measuring the communication behavior. According to media use index, the first five media recognized most important among the 18 communication media were progressive farmer (1220), neighbor (1218), friend (1064), sub assistant agriculture officer (924) and group discussion (694) in receiving information on rice cultivation. Among five technologies of rice cultivation, the highest extent of communication media was used for pest management practices for which media use index was 2825 and it was followed by recommended fertilizer dose (2284), modern varieties (1601), recommended seed rate (1289) and recommended irrigation (1171). On the basis of use of communication media, farmers were classified into three categories viz. occasional (66.67%), frequent (33.33%) users and none of them found to be regular user of communication media. Co-efficient of correlation was computed to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics of the farmers and their communication behavior in receiving the information. Education, cosmopoliteness, innovativeness, attitude towards agricultural technology had significant positive relationship with the communication behavior of the farmers. However, age of the respondents had significant negative relationship while, family size, farm size, annual income, organizational participation and problem confrontation of the farmers had no relationshipDownload