Abstract
Proper nourishment is fundamental for satisfactory crop growth and production. However, for efficient crop production, it is important to understand the soil environment, to recognize the limitations of that environment, and to ameliorate them where possible without damaging the soil quality. Soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities (STFRF) can help farmers to achieve environmental and economic sustainability by assisting them in recognizing their soil condition, reducing agrochemicals usage, using an appropriate amount of fertilizer, minimizing input costs, and achieving higher yield. These facilities are not new in the context of Bangladesh, yet the adoption rate among farmers is low and its determinants have rarely been empirically tested based on microlevel data. Therefore, this study examined those factors underlying the adoption of soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities using field surveyed data of 176 individual farmers. Our evidence shows that young farmers with less farming experience are more likely to adopt these facilities. Additionally, being small-scale farmers, having higher education, having more farming income, and having more knowledge about these facilities and the fees of these facilities were found to have a significant effect on the adoption. On the other hand, gender, land ownership, and secondary income were found to be insignificant with regard to the adoption of soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities. Our results also revealed that most adopter farmers not only focused on profitability, but were additionally concerned with environmental well-being.
Highlights
Sustainable agriculture has been described as a concept/system that conserves the natural environment and resources in a technically appropriate, economically viable, and socially acceptable way [1]
When age was compared with adoption, we found that there is a significant relationship between these two variables (p < 0.05) and the associations are moderately strong (Cramer’s V = 0.268), indicating age significantly influences the positive adoption of soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities
The findings indicated that among 87 of the overall participating farmers who could read, write, and sign their name, 53 have adopted the soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities, whereas those who were illiterate accounted for 61.36% (54) of the ones that choose not to adopt
Summary
Sustainable agriculture has been described as a concept/system that conserves the natural environment and resources in a technically appropriate, economically viable, and socially acceptable way [1]. The sustainable development of the agricultural sector critically depends on the adoption of improved, scale-appropriate, and eco-friendly technologies, which included soil quality measurement tools, site-specific fertilizer use measures, disease resistant and climate adjusted seeds, modern management practices, and the conservation of resources via scale appropriate agricultural machinery [2]. Through agricultural activity, the Bangladeshi economy successfully increased by 7.1% in 2016 fiscal year (FY), which exceeded the national growth target and trajectory by 7.0% and 6%, respectively [5]. 12.9% of the overall population remains ultra-poor, living on the equivalent of US $1.25 per day or less, with 31% living below the national poverty line of US $2 per day [6,8]. The World Bank [9] data indicated that 15.1% of the total population is still undernourished, while one-fourth of the population remains food insecure, including eleven million suffering from serious hunger [10,11]
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