A COMPARISON BETWEEN CONTRACT AND NON CONTRACT POTATO FARMERS

Abstract

The objective of the study was to identify differences in demographic and operational characteristics between contract and non contract potato farmers. Thirteen selected characteristics of both the contract and non contract farmers were studied. The focus was also to identify the influencing factors responsible for production related decisions and preferences of informational sources by the contract and non contract potato farmers. Data were collected during February, 2016 from 60 contract and 60 non contract farmers under Sadar upazila of Sherpur district. The descriptive statistics showed that there were huge differences between contract and non contract farmers in terms of their responses among various categories. On the other hand, independent sample t-test showed that there were significant differences between the contract and non contract farmers in respect of land under potato cultivation, income from potato cultivation, communication media exposure, training exposure, knowledge on potato cultivation and satisfaction towards potato cultivation. It also showed that, the influencing factors responsible for production related decisions varied between the contract and non contract farmers at various degrees of influences. Credit facilities influenced the contract farmers to the highest extent but it had no influence on potato cultivation by the non contract farmers. Whereas marketing facilities and success stories jointly hold the first rank as influencing factor to the non contract potato farmers. Besides those, among 10 specific informational sources, Deputy Assistant Director, BADC was preferred mostly by the contract potato farmers, whereas input dealers ranked 1 XV st position in case of the non contract farmers.