M. F. Ahmed
Assistant Professor
Economics Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna – 9208
M. M. Billah
Economics Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna – 9208, Bangladesh
Sharecropping; Land tenancy; Rice productivity; Production function; South-West region of Bangladesh.
Paikgacha Upazila of Khulna District in Bangladesh
Farming System
Performance
Description of the Study Area
A field survey was conducted based on the multistage sampling technique in two purposively selected villages namely Raruli and Bhabanipur in Raruli Union of Paikgacha Upazila of Khulna District in Bangladesh. These two villages were known to both the authors as they were living in Khulna District at that time of the survey. For the convenience of surveying the farmers, purposively Khulna District among the Districts of the South-west region of Bangladesh then Paikgacha Upazila among the nine Upazilas was selected as the study Upazila. Then two villages namely Raruli and Bhabanipur among the two hundred and twelve villages from Paikgacha Upazila were chosen purposively. These two villages were adjacent to each other.
Sampling Technique, Data Collection Procedure and Period of Study
At that time of the survey, a village listing of rice cultivators (list of the farmers) was conducted in these two villages and it was found that there were about four hundred rice farmers in these two villages who were the concerned population of this study. As the objectives of this study were to find the role of sharecropping on rice productivity, two categories of farmers – sharecropper and owner farmer in rice cultivation were taken for this study to find out their production difference. To make a balance between these two groups, the primary data were collected from a total of 80 respondents randomly taking 40 from the owner farmers and 40 from the sharecroppers which were a mixture of pure sharecroppers and fixed rental based tenants. The pure sharecroppers share the output (crop amount) with the landowners in a pre-determined proportion, some cases 50:50 share and in other cases 65:35, whereas in a fixed rental system of cultivation, a fixed amount of money paid annually to the landowners by the cultivators ranged from BDT 4,000 to BDT 6,000 [1 US $ = 78.00 Bangladeshi Taka at the time of survey] per hectare of land depending on the land fertility and accessibility of land. The sharecroppers might have some amount of their own land. However, this study only considered the information on their cultivated land, which is in under sharecropping system. In order to find the role of sharecropping on rice productivity, the study collected the data on rice production and input use from the rice production plots of landowners and the production plots of sharecroppers.
A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 80 samples of these two villages. A draft questionnaire was prepared and it was pre-tested through a pilot survey. The pilot survey was conducted during the middle of May 2014. After a careful scrutiny based on the observations from pilot survey and field visits, the final version of the questionnaire was prepared for the household survey, which was conducted in June 2014. The questionnaire covered - the socio-economic condition of the farmer, land holding, tenancy structure, farming type, use of inputs, output, existing crop sharing practice, etc. The information on rice cultivation covered the Boro rice which is usually cultivated during January to May in each year.
Analytical Technique
To determine the output differentials between the sharecropper and owner farmer, the hypotheses were tested by using the t-test. The study also used a kernel distribution curve to find the production structure between the sharecroppers and owner farmers. This curve showed the production distribution of both the group of farmers and the enveloped area represented the density of each group. In order to assess the effect of sharecropping on rice productivity, a Cobb- Douglas form of production function was estimated (Equation 1). In the production function, land ownership pattern of the farm was used as a dummy (1 for owner farmer and 0 for sharecropper) along with several other explanatory variables such as land size, number of labor, use of seed, use of fertilizers, use of pesticides, cost of irrigation, cost of ploughing, nature of farming, farming experience, cropping pattern and crop rotation are used as the explanatory variables.
Bangladesh J. Agril. Res. 43(3): 417-430, September 2018 ISSN 0258-7122 (Print), 2408-8293 (Online)
Journal