Perceived Impact Of Tea Farming On Livelihoods Of Smallholder Farmers In Panchagarh District
Özet
The main objective of the study was to assess the perceived impact of tea farming on livelihoods of the smallholder tea growers. The research was conducted in the Tetulia upazila under Panchagarh district. A total of 550 farmers constituted the population of the study, and 118 small tea growers were selected as samples of the study following simple random sampling techniques. An interview schedule was used for data collection, and data was collected from 28 August to 12 October 2023. Perceived impact on livelihood of the small tea growers were assessed based on a five-point Likert scale. In contrast, both Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient (r) and multiple linear regressions were performed to determine the relationships, influence and contribution of the selected characteristics to perceived impact of tea farming on livelihood of smallholder farmers. Present status explored that bought leaf factories are the major buyer of leaves and small-scale farmers were not getting the desired price of their tea leaves. The price fluctuation has happened over time in recent years and 20 to 40 percent deduction of the weight by the factories due to the long and large leaves. More than four-fifths of the tea growers cut raw leaves with a sharp knife instead of plucking leaves by hand. Most tea growers use pickup trucks to transport an excessive amount of raw leaves due to the high cost of labor and transportation which also degrades the quality of the tea. So, a significant proportion of the small tea growers who rely solely on income from tea farming opined that it is not profitable. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of tea growers are moderately satisfied by cultivating tea. Farmers have lost interest in cultivating tea due to the determining the price of raw leaves as desired by the factory owners and giving deductions on the leaves supplied by farmers and non-availability of low-cost agricultural credit and subsidized fertilizers and pesticides among small tea farmers. The bought leaf factories owners opined that unplanned tea farming by small growers supplied low quality and irregular raw leaves, impeding the production of good quality tea and causing a decline in tea auction market prices. The results of the study showed that tea farming had a medium perceived impact on livelihood of the 67.8 percent farmers. The selected characteristics of the farmers such as education status, farm size, tea cultivating area, income from tea farming, innovativeness, knowledge on tea farming, and attitude towards selling price of tea leaves have significant and positive effect on perceived impact of tea farming on livelihood of the small holder tea growers. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the whole model explained 63.9 percent of the total variation in the perceived impact of tea farming on livelihood of the small holder tea growers. Education status, innovativeness, knowledge on tea farming, and attitude towards selling price of tea leaves showed significant positive contributions to the perceived impact of tea farming.
Key Words: Livelihood, Smallholder tea growers, Percieved impact, Tea farmers, Panchagarh district
