Farmers’ Attitude towards Production and Utilization of Biochar as Ecofriendly Practice

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to determine the farmers’ attitude towards production and utilization of biochar as ecofriendly practice. Data were collected through personal interview from 104 randomly selected farmers at Nawabgang Upazila (sub-district) of Dinajpur district in the northern Bangladesh. A pretested and structured interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents during 15 March to 18 April, 2017. Simple and direct questions with different scales were used to obtain information. Descriptive statistics are used to explain the selected characteristics of the farmers. The co-efficient of correlation (r) test was computed in order to explore the relationships between ten selected characteristics of the farmers and their attitude towards biochar production and utilization as ecofriendly practice. The results indicated that more than three-fourths (76.92%) farmers had highly favorable attitude towards biochar production and utilization as eco-friendly practice, while 15.38% moderately favorable attitude and 7.7% had slightly favorable attitude. Correlation coefficient analysis indicated that among 10 characteristics of farmers such as farm size, annual household income, training received, credit received, organizational participation and extension media contact had significant relationships with their attitude toward biochar production and utilization. However, age, education, family size and cosmopoliteness had no significant relationships with their attitude towards production and utilization of biochar as ecofriendly practice. The top ranked problem faced by the farmers in implementing of biochar production and utilization was found on ‘lack of woody fuel’. It might be recommended that biochar preparation should be done by using other raw materials such as tree leaves or branches, jute sticks etc available in the locality. Further proper steps should be taken by the concerned authority to maximize extension contact through farm visit, demonstrations and mass media on biochar benefits for enhancing the use of biochar.