A STUDY ON FINANCIAL PROFITABILITY AND FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE YIELD OF OFF- SEASON VEGETABLE CULTIVATION IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

Brahmanbaria and Kishoregonj districts have been selected purposively as study area. The study was confined to only summer tomato and cauliflower. Simple random sampling technique has been used for collecting cross sectional data and information from a total of 100 farmers (summer tomato-50 and off-season cauliflower-50). All the collected data were summarized and scrutinized carefully to eliminate all possible errors. Data were presented mostly in the tabular form. Descriptive statistics like average, percentage etc. were followed to analyze the data to achieve the objectives of the study. Functional analysis was also adopted in a small scale to arrive at expected findings. A Cobb-Douglas production function was used to estimate the factors affecting the yield of vegetables. Cost items were identified as land preparation, human labour, seed, urea, TSP, MoP, manure, irrigation, insecticide, interest on operating capital and land use cost. All these cost were accounted for one production period of selected vegetables. Per hectare gross return of summer tomato and cauliflower were calculated at Tk. 1099395.00 and Tk. 615360.00, respectively. Net returns of summer tomato and cauliflower were calculated at Tk. 994353.40 and Tk. 455278.13 per hectare, respectively. Benefit Cost Ratios (BCRs) were found to be 10.47 and 3.84 for summer tomato and cauliflower, respectively. The net returns of summer tomato and cauliflower were found to be positive and the BCRs were greater than one, which showed that the cultivation of summer tomato and cauliflower were profitable. Production function analysis suggested that land preparation cost, human labour cost, seed, urea and TSP had a positive and significant effect on the yield of summer tomato and cauliflower. MoP and irrigation cost had insignificant effect on the yield of both crops and irrigation cost had a positive and significant effect on the yield of cauliflower. Cost of insecticides had negative but significant effect on the yield of summer tomato, and had a positive and significant effect on the yield of cauliflower. The Adjusted R 2 s were found to be 0.772752, and 0.853164 for summer tomato and cauliflower, respectively. The F-values of the estimated production functions of summer tomato and cauliflower were found to be significant at one percent level which implies good fit of the models.