Selection of the study area:
The present study was conducted in some selected villages of Sreemangal and Kamalganj upazilas of Maulvibazar district. These 2 upazilas were selected due to their high potentiality of growing tomato and bean vegetables over other upzilas of Maulvibazar district (BBS, 2011). The location map of the study area is presented. The cultivated seasonal and off seasonal tomato and bean varieties/genotypes in the study area are presented.
Sampling design:
For the presented study, four categories of farmers were selected. The target groups included seasonal tomato farmers, off-seasonal tomato farmers, seasonal bean farmers and off-seasonal bean farmers. Farmers were selected using convenience sampling technique. The total sample size was 120. The sample distribution is presented.
Method of data collection and analysis:
The study utilized both primary and secondary data. For collecting primary data, a pretested structure interview schedule was used. The data were collected during September to October in 2019. The present study also utilized some secondary data, which were collected from FAOSTAT (5-yearly monthly producer price data of tomato and bean vegetables), different journals, reports, websites, books and handouts. In the price dataset, some data were found missing. This missing data were handled using linear interpolation technique. The data were analyzed using descriptive, mathematical and statistical technique. For data analysis, Microsoft Office Excel 2010, IBM SPSS (Version 25.0) and Stata (Version 15.0) were used.
Analytical techniques:
The objective based analytical technique is discussed below: Objective-i: Comparative profitability The profitability of seasonal and off-seasonal tomato and bean production were measured in terms of gross return (GR), gross margin (GM), net return (NR) and benefitcost ratio (BCR). The algebraic formulae are expressed below: * GR=XmpPmp + XbpPbp; * GM = GR - ∑Cv; * NR= GR - ∑Cv - ∑Cf; * BCR (undiscounted) = GR ÷ GC Where, Xmp = Yield of main product; Pmp = Price of main product; Xbp = Yield of by-product; Pbp = Price of by *product; ∑Cv = Total Variable Cost; ∑Cf = Total Fixed Cost; GC = Gross Cost (i.e. ∑Cv + ∑Cf). In the algebraic form of GR, the yield of by-product for tomato and bean vegetables were considered as zero (0) because there existed no saleable by-product quantity for both tomato and bean production. For comparison, GR, GM, NR and BCR (undiscounted) were compared. By using opportunity cost concept, interest on operating capital was determined. In the present study, interest rate and production period (land preparation to harvesting time) were 10% and 3 months, respectively. The formula which was used for calculating interest on operating capital is given below (Bithi, 2014; Alam, 2016): Interest on operating capital= (operating capital× rate of interest× time considered)/2.
Objective-ii: Seasonal price variations:
Seasonal price variation can be examined by means of four techniques, i.e., simple average method, ratio to trend method, ratio to moving average method and link relative method (Roy et al., 2012). In examining seasonal price variations, 12-months ratio to moving average technique was utilized, which is impartially a decent estimate of the trend and cyclical components combined (Lutfa et al., 2018).
Objective-iii:
Risk management strategies For evaluation of risk management strategies, simple statistical techniques- frequency and relative frequency were utilized. In order to count relative frequency, the researchers divided the frequency by the total number of data values.