INFORMATION NEEDS FOR CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES AMONG COASTAL FARMERS IN SOUTHERN BANGLADESH

Probir Kumar Mittra and Md. Golam Rabbani Akanda

DOI: 10.26480/bda.01.2025.56.61

ABSTRACT
Coastal regions of southern Bangladesh are highly vulnerable to climate change, posing serious threats to agricultural productivity and the livelihoods of farming communities. Climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAP) offer promising solutions to enhance resilience, but their effective adoption depends on farmers’ access to timely, relevant, and need-based information. Understanding the specific information needs of coastal farmers is therefore essential for designing targeted extension services and promoting sustainable, climate-resilient agriculture. This study aimed to assess the information needs of coastal farmers regarding climate-smart agricultural practices and also explored relationships and contribution of the selected characteristics of the coastal farmers to their information needs regarding climate smart agricultural practices. The study was conducted at Kalapara upazila of Patuakhali district. Data were collected with the help of pre-tested interview schedule from a sample of 310 coastal farmers selected through multi-stage random sampling technique. Results of information needs by the coastal farmers ranged from 50 to 85 against the possible range of 20 to 100. The mean and standard deviation were 71.14 and 8.51 respectively. Majority (66.13 percent) of the coastal farmers had medium information needs compared to 17.42 percent had high information needs and 16.45 percent had low information needs concerning climate smart agricultural practices. Correlation tests indicated that agricultural knowledge, training experience, communication exposure, cosmopoliteness showed significant negative relationship and innovativeness and economic motivation showed significant positive relationship with information needs by the respondents. Regression results indicated that 18.4 percent variation was contributed by cosmopoliteness (5.2 percent), agricultural knowledge (4.1 percent), economic motivation (3.5 percent), training exposure (3.6 percent) and innovativeness (1.9 percent) of the coastal farmers. These findings suggest that tailored extension strategies, informed by farmers’ individual characteristics, are essential to effectively promote climate-smart agriculture in vulnerable coastal regions.

KEYWORDS
CSA-practices, Information need, Coastal farmers, Southern Bangladesh