EXPLORING IMPROVED AGROFORESTRY PRACTICED FARMER’S SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR LIVELIHOOD IN SELECTIVE CHARLANDS OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

A baseline survey is very much important to identify the preliminary condition of a certain group or the people of a certain area and/or whole country. A baseline study is one that looks at study characteristics at a particular time or under a particular set of conditions to establish a “base line. The study accounting data of 80 farmers were collected from Bolaierchar and Bagolgor char under Sherpur district and Naovangar char and laxmir char from Jamalpur district for base line survey of upliftment of farmers livelihood and enrichment of environment through improve agroforestry practice in charland ecosystem of Bangladesh project by using Random Sampling Technique method. Data refer to the input output details and other socio-economic characteristics of upliftment of farmers livelihood in the crop year 2017-2018. Random sampling technique has been used for collecting data. The result of the baseline survey showed that out of 80 sample farmers two locations in agroforestry practicing household’s age was categorized at five age groups such as 20-29 years, 30-39 years, 40-49 years, 50-59 and 60-69 years. The sample households were classified into three groups based on their educational level such as; illiterate, can sign and primary and above. The family size was categorized by five categories such as number of member’s 3-5 persons, 6-8 persons, 9-11 persons and 12-14 persons, 15-18 persons. The average annual incomes were categorized into Tk.50000 to Tk.99999, Tk.100000 to Tk.149999, Tk.150000 to Tk.199999, Tk.200000 to Tk.249999 and Tk.250000 to Tk.300000. Total 17 tree species were recorded from the selected farm families of four different char village of Sadar upazila of Jamalpur and Sherpur district (Table 6) of which mango (99%), jackfruit (95%), black berry (26%), guava (22%), lemon (21%) and bamboo (20%) are the dominant tree species. Total 8 different existing agroforestry models were recorded in the studied charland areas. Among these different existing models very common model was Bean and Jiga tree-based agroforestry which was found in only 20% surveyed family.