Factors Influencing Economic Viability of Small Farmer of Rice Production in Bangladesh

Abstract

The focus of this study was to conduct research on small rice farmers and to identify the factors and their influence in viability of rice production in Bangladesh. The study was conducted using a longitudinal survey made under the Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) project of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). A total of 179,179,156 and 177 small rice farms were selected as a sample for the years of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively. Among 691 small farmers, 562 farmers were viable farmer and 129 farmers were non-viable farmers who were producing rice in the study area. The small farmers lived in the same socio-economic environment. The economic surplus of small farmer was 11018.5 tk. 12205 tk., 6006 tk. and 4461 tk. in different years. To achieve the objective discriminant function analysis was used. For this analysis eight discriminant factors were selected i.e. family size, farm size, education, value productivity from crops, net income from dairy, off-farm income, total fixed investment and domestic expenditure. It is found that off-farm income was the most significant discriminat factor among the eight factors related to the discriminating of viable and non- viable of small farmers of rice production Besides value from crops, total fixed investment and domestic expenditure were the other significant factors found during all the years.