Assessing Agricultural Extension Professionals Opinion towards Sustainable Agriculture in Bangladesh

Aims: The farmers of Bangladesh is producing extra food for huge number of people by injudicious use of agro-chemicals thereby damaging the ecosystem and hampering the sustainability. For checking this ill practice, it requires shifting of good practice to the farmers by the extension agent although information gap exists regarding extension professionals opinion towards sustainable agriculture. The main target of this study is to chalk out the extension professional opinion towards sustainable agriculture in Bangladesh.

Study Design: A descriptive survey research design is followed for the study and mailed questionnaire is the main instrument of the research.

Place and Duration of Study: Data were collected from the Sub Assistant Agriculture Officers (SAAOs) under the department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) of five Upazilas (the lowest administrative unit of the country) of five Districts. The Upazilas were Sadar Upazila of Gazipur District, Sadar Upazila of Gaibandha District, Kaliganj Upazila of Jhenaidah District, Chakaria Upazila of Cox’s Bazar District and Jhuraicharri Upazila of Rangamati District.

Methodology: A total number of 165 SAAOs of the five Upazilas were the population and out of the collected questionnaire from the SAAOs, 115 were treated as the sample of the study. The questionnaire was developed according to the objective of the research. For judging the opinion five point Likert scale was used. Multiple regression analysis was administered using SPSS for finding out the influence of extension professionals socio-demographic characteristics on their opinion towards sustainable agriculture.

Results: The extension professionals had moderate to low level of opinion towards sustainable agriculture. Three characteristics (eg. in-service training, in-service sustainable agriculture training and environmental consciousness) had influence on the opinion according to the regression results.

Conclusion: There is a need to arrange different types of in-service training related to sustainable agriculture. Future research is needed with incorporation of other variables along with the current one to get more robust results.