Abstract
Performance of rice crops in farmers’ fields largely lower than varietal potential. Besides, profitability is an important aspect of production decision for the semi-subsistence farming system in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study was conducted evaluate crops management practice and performance of rice in different seasons. Farmers’ group discussion with key informant farmers was conducted for collecting and validating the data using a semi-structured questionnaire. Adoption of modern rice varieties was high in the village. Rice is planted delay in all the seasons because of three crops (rice-rice-rice) rice based cropping patterns in the village. Farmers mainly relied on household seeds (owned stored and purchase from neighboring farmers) in Aus and Aman seasons while the dealer supplied seed is the prime seed source in Boro season. The seed rates were largely higher than recommendation rates. Farmers’ fertilizers management is highly inconsistent with recommendation practice. Both manual and chemical methods are used for controlling weeds. Chemical method is mainly practiced for controlling insects and diseases of crops. Paddle and power thresher is used for threshing rice. Boro rice gave Boro rice gave higher yield (4.94 t/ha) followed by T. Aman (3.29 t/ha) and Aus (3.09 t/ha) due to better cropping environment, good management practices, higher inputs and usages of better genotypes. The performance of rice in the three seasons showed large yield gap. T. Aman gave higher gross margin (BDT 22,015/ha) followed by Boro (BDT 16,468/ha) and Aus (BDT 9,414/ha) because of higher price and lower production cost. Participation of women in the intercultural operations of crops and their role sin decision making about farming was a few. Nevertheless, they intensively participate in post-harvest processing of crops and other household activates and decisions. In short, despite a large yield gap, rice production is profitable in the three seasons at survey year’s price. The poorer access to extension service, good quality seed, phosphorous fertilizers, pesticides and power supply were identified as barrier to achieve potential performance of rice cultivars and expected level of returns. Thus, policy supports for increasing access to extension supports and quality inputs may reduce yield gap and enhance productivity and profitability of rice crops largely.
Highlights
Bangladesh is a small (147,570 sq. km2) and densely populated (976 persons/km2) agriculture base country
medium high land (MHL) was sub-categorized as MHL-11 and MHL-22
Three-fifth of the land was MHL-1 which is inundated about 0-30 cm depth during rainy season
Summary
Bangladesh is a small (147,570 sq. km2) and densely populated (976 persons/km2) agriculture base country. Km2) and densely populated (976 persons/km2) agriculture base country. High population growth (2.18%) with low growth in agricultural productivity adversely affects the living standard of 142.3 million people in the country in 2011 [1, 2]. The contribution of agriculture in gross domestic product (GDP) decreased to 11.33% in 2015/16 from 21.84% in 2005-06 [3, 4]. Still agriculture is mainstay of economy, over 80% of rural population directly and indirectly depends on agriculture for livelihoods [5]. On the average 45% of total people were employed in agriculture [5]. The country is nearly selfsufficient in staple food rice production but still a large
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