Socio-Economic Status of Pineapple Growers in Bangladesh: A Study on Tangail District

Abstract

Pineapple is an important fruit worldwide due to its many nutritional and economic uses. To determine the overall lifestyle of the pineapple growers socio-economic indicators are the most important indicators. The aim of our study is to examine the socio-economic status of the pineapple farmers. The researchers selected the madhupur upzilla of Tangail district. Data were randomly collected from 98 farmers. A well-structured questionnaire was used for collecting data. We have used both descriptive and functional analysis in this study. Descriptive statistics including frequency, sum, average, percentage, and ratios were used to analyze the data. The study revealed that the majority of the farmers were small (73.47 percent) and medium (15.31 percent) categories. Most of the pineapple growers were middle-aged (31- 50 years), whereas a little portion of them were older aged (greater than 51). In the study area, it was found that 92.86 percent of the respondents were married. Almost all farmers were literate and more than 25.51 percent of them had primary education in the study areas. The majority of the farmers had below 10 years of farming experience and their primary occupation of them (81.63 percent) was agriculture including pineapple cultivation. Only 6.12 percent of people received training from the government agriculture extension office and 62.24 percent of pineapple farmers received credit from both banks and NGOs. The total cost for pineapple cultivation in the study area was 38206100 taka. Net return was 26917700 taka in the study area. The average BCR was 1.70 but farmers face various problems like lack of capital processing industry or factory storage of pineapple marketing natural calamities etc. This research study will try to analyze socio-economic profile of pineapple growers, the financial significance of pineapple production, and solutions to specific problems. It will also provide some recommendations for improving the condition of pineapple production and processing by using the latest agro-technology.