ADOPTION OF WHEAT CULTIVATION TECHNOLOGIES BY THE FARMERS IN GANGNI UPAZILA OF MEHERPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

In Bangladesh wheat is the second important cereal crop next to rice and has achieved a remarkable progress in increasing wheat cultivation and productivity over the last 30 years but there is a lack of information about farmers’ adoption of wheat cultivation technologies which may help to increase overall wheat production. Therefore this study was carried out to describe some selected characteristics of the wheat farmers, to measure the extent of adoption of wheat cultivation technologies under the studied area, to estimate the contribution of some selected characteristics of farmers to adoption of wheat cultivation technologies. The study was conducted in Gangni Upazila of Meherpur District. Four villages were selected purposively. The number of wheat grower families of these villages were 2916. Among them, 120 respondents were selected randomly. From the findings it was revealed that Education, Annual income, Training and Extension media contact of the farmers had significant positive contribution to the adoption of wheat cultivation technologies. 19.17% of farmers were belonged to low adoption category, 55.83% farmers were belonged to medium adoption category, 25% farmers are belonged to high adoption category. All the sample farmers were more or less involved in adopting wheat cultivation technologies yet their extent of adoption of wheat cultivation technologies was not satisfactory. It was concluded that adoption of wheat cultivation technologies can be increased through increasing education, family income, training and extension media contact. Therefore, it may be recommended that necessary steps should be taken by the concern authority to increase the adoption of wheat cultivation technologies in the study area considering these variables.