Participation of the Saotal Farmers in Agricultural Activities of CARITAS in Dinajpur District of Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study was to describe 10 selected characteristics of the Saotal farmers, to determine the extent of participation of the Saotal farmers, to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics of Saotal farmer and their participation in agricultural activities of CARITAS and to identify the problems faced by the Saotal farmers in agricultural activities of CARITAS. Data were collected using interview schedule from a sample of 96 Saotal farmers selected by multistage random sampling procedure from 10 villages of Biral and Chirirbandar upazila of Dinajpur District during 1 September 2012 to 15 October 2012. Ten selected characteristics namely age, educational qualification, farm size, agricultural training received, annual income, credit received, cosmopoliteness, NGO participation, extension communication exposure and attitude towards NGOs of the Saotal farmers were considered as independent variables while their participation in agricultural activities of CARITAS constituted dependent variable. The dependent variable was measured based on three aspects of agriculture namely crop cultivation, livestock rearing and homestead plantation and finally overall agricultural participation was determined by summing up these aspects. Among the 21 (seven from each) selected activities of crop cultivation, livestock rearing and homestead plantation, it was found that the top participation of the Saotal farmers were use of modern seeds, cleaning cowshed and preparation of ideal pit respectively. In case of overall participation, highest proportion (60.41 percent) of the Saotal farmers had medium participation compared to 33.37 percent low and only 5.20 percent high. Among the 10 independent variables six namely educational qualification, farm size, agricultural training received, annual income, credit received and extension media exposure showed positive relationships with the dependent variable while other four namely age, cosmopoliteness, NGO participation and attitude towards NGO were not correlated significantly. The top three problems faced by the respondents in participating agricultural activities were attack of insect in trees, problem in training and pruning, and regular feeding of cattle, while the least problem was preparation of ideal pit.