Rural Development and Food Security Through Homestead Vegetable Production: A Case Study

Abstract

Cumilla Sadar Dakshin region is highly diverse in respect to land types, topography, agro-ecology, land-use pattern, cropping systems and crop variability & variety. Agricultural development of the region largely depends on the reliable and comprehensive statistics of the existing cropping cultivation and its related system adopted by the farmers. To investigate the homestead vegetable production and its impact on family nutrition, food security, income generation as well as involvement of female members a survey study was conducted at Cumilla Sadar Dakshin during 2019. A total of 150 selected homesteads were surveyed for this purpose through developed questionnaire and focus group discussion. Both primary and secondary data has been collected from different sources to fulfill the objectives of the study. The results of this study indicated that the farmer’s age, marital status, education level, farm size, source of income, women participation etc. Farmer’s knowledge and farming experiences, perception and attitude differs on different demographic conditions like: age, sex, education, farm size, training which significantly influence the adoption of modern technologies provided by different organizations. The results also showed that women contribution in homestead vegetable production is high in medium farmer’s category 41.67% and low in small farmers 36.36% respectively. The highest number of total vegetables was produced by the medium farmer (63,732 kg/year) followed by small (39,445 kg/year) and marginal farmer (25,514 kg/year). This study provides some recommendation which might impacts on betterment of farmers’ occupational and socio-economic condition by establishing proper policy and legislation both in local and national level administration as well as agricultural extension.

Keywords

• food security
• rural development
• women empowerment
• nutrition
• homestead vegetable production.