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Journal of Agroecology and Natural Resource Management
p-ISSN: 2394-0786, e-ISSN: 2394-0794, Volume 4, Issue 1; January-March, 2017 pp. 101-104
© Krishi Sanskriti Publications
http://www.krishisanskriti.org/Publication.html
Effectiveness of Agriculture Related Television
Programmes for Disseminating Agricultural
Information Perceived by the
Farmers of Bangladesh
F H Chudhury1, M R Amin2,4, M M Adhikary3, M A Islam4 and M Rokonuzzaman5
1MS Student, Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Sylhet Agricultural University, Bangladesh
2,5Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Sylhet Agricultural University, Bangladesh
3Department of Agricultural Extension, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, West Bengal, India
Abstract—The present study was to determine and describe the
perception of farmers regarding effectiveness of agriculture related
TV programmes for the dissemination of agricultural information.
Data were collected interviewing randomly selected hundreds of
television viewing farmer by using personal interview schedule
method. Among these hundred respondents majority (68%) of the
farmers perceived agriculture related TV programmes as medium
effective while 18% high effective and 14% low effective. Among
these eleven selected characteristics level of education, farm size,
annual family income, agricultural knowledge, attitude towards
agriculture related TV programmes, innovativeness, extension media
exposure, time expand for TV watching of the respondents had
significant positive relationship with their perceived effectiveness of
agriculture related TV programmes for the dissemination of
agricultural information. Whereas age and farming experience were
negatively significant relationship with their perceived effectiveness
of agriculture related TV programmes for the dissemination of
agricultural information. However family size of the farmers had no
significant relationship with the effectiveness of agriculture related
TV programmes for dissemination of agricultural information as
perceived by the farmers.
Keywords: Mass media, Television, Diffusion, Script writing.
1. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is the economic backbone of Bangladesh with
approximately 80% people depends on it directly or indirectly
for their subsistence. The rate of agricultural production in our
country is very low. However, agricultural production can be
increased if appropriate information related to modern
technologies can be reached to the farmers. Communication
media provides necessary information at the right time to the
right people. Television is an important means of extension
communication media because it covers great distances and
leaps all kinds of natural barriers. In the adoption of new ideas
Television (TV) plays an important role especially in the
awareness and interest stages (Kashem, 1992).Television is
one of the effective mass media for its audio visual
characteristics. People can easily understand the untold things.
In our country television become very popular media day by
day in rural area. Farmer takes it frequently and tries to
practice it at farm level. Hoque (1990) in his paper occluded
that mass media can perform a better role in technology
diffusion than what those do today. Therefore, planned efforts
to introduce more of mass media strategies that are proven
effective by experiments are highly recommended. Rahman
(2003) found in a study that 61.6% of the farmer had medium
adoption while 22.7% had low adoption & 15.7% had high
adoption of selected technologies by using television.
Television is a very important mass media through which
farmers get variety levels of information. Still now in our
country information dissemination in rural area is very
difficult. Maximum of our farmers are illiterate which create
hindrance with printed media. Again due to insufficient media
productions, budget constraints and insufficient skilled
personnel those materials can not be spread throughout the
country. Again, farmers still now rely on personnel contact
and group contact with farmers for information dissemination
due to lack of extension agents. Interpersonal contact of
extension agent and farmers are not so optimal and effective.
A lot of reasons may be behind this. One major factor can be
their lack of knowledge of appropriate media utilization at all
level. Educational, socio economic condition of farmer may be
the big reason. In that case getting information through
television is easier for them. Considering the importance and
potentiality of television the researcher become interested to
conduct a study to find out the effectiveness of agriculture
related television programmes for disseminating agricultural
information and to what extent this information are perceived
by the farmers.
F H Chudhury, M R Amin2, M M Adhikary, M A Islam and M Rokonuzzaman
Journal of Agroecology and Natural Resource Management
p-ISSN: 2394-0786, e-ISSN: 2394-0794, Volume 4, Issue 1; January-March, 2017
102
2. MATERIALS AND METHOD
Purposively South Surmaupazila of Sylhet district was
selected as the locale of the study. The study area
encompasses only three villages of Daudpur union under
South SurmaUpazila of Sylhet district. The name of the
villages was Tirashigram, Shirajpur & Konarchor. These
villages were selected for the study as these villages had
proper dish facilities. The total numbers of the television
viewing farmers in the selected three villages were 400.
Twenty five percent (25%) of the farmers were selected as the
sample following proportionately random sampling method.
Thus, 100 farmers were selected as sample of the study. Data
were collected from the sampled farmers using an interview
schedule following personal interview method. Some of the
selected characteristics of the respondent viz age, Level of
education, Farm size, Farming experience, Annual family
income, Agricultural knowledge, Attitude towards agriculture
related TV programmes, Innovativeness, Extension media
exposure, Time spent for watching TV were treated as
independent variables while Effectiveness of agriculture
related TV Programmes for dissemination of agricultural
information was the dependent variable of the study. The
extent of effectiveness of the programmes was measured by
using a 4 point rating scale with four alternative responses of
the respondents such as highly effective, effective, less
effective and not at all effective. Scores were assigned to these
alternative responses as 3 for ‘highly effective’, 2 for
‘effective’, 1 for ‘less effective’ and 0 for ‘not at all effective’.
By adding the assigned scores of 10 selected types of
information of a respondent together, the effectiveness score
was obtained. Thus, the score of effectiveness of agriculture
related TV Programmes could range from 0-30, where 0
indicates not at all effective and 30 indicates very high
effective agriculture related TV Programmes for dissemination
of information. The extent of effectiveness of the programmes
was measured by using a 4 point rating scale given below:
Extent Of Effectiveness
Not Effective at all
Less Effective
Effective
Highly Effective
Scores assigned
0
1
2
3
3. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS:
Selected characteristics of the respondents:
Age: Highest proportion (68%) of the respondents felt in the
middle aged category while 17% respondents felt in young
and another 15% in old age category.
Educational Qualification: Half of the farmers (53%) fell in
the secondary level category, where 6% of the farmers had no
literacy, and 41% of them had primary level of educational
qualification.
Family size: Majority (73%) of the farmers had medium
family size of having (5–10) members while, (14%) had small
family with the members having (2-4) and (13%) of the
respondents were belongs to large family having above 11
members.
Farm size: 13% farmers had small farm holding category,
71% were medium, and 16% had large farm holding category.
Farming experience: Highest proportion (69%) of the
respondents were medium experienced farmers, 12% were low
experienced and 19% of the respondents had high experience
in farming activities.
Annual family income :74% of the farmers had medium
family income while 11% had low and only 15% had high
annual family income.
Agricultural knowledge: 67% of the respondents had
medium knowledge and 12% of the respondents had low
agricultural knowledge where as 21% had high agricultural
knowledge.
Attitude towards agriculture related TV programmes:
Majority of the respondents (76%) had medium favorable
attitude towards agriculture related TV programmes, (14%)
had low and (10%) had highly favorable attitude respectively.
Innovativeness: 58% of the respondents had medium
innovativeness, while 21% of them less innovative and only
21% were highly innovative. This indicates that the overall
innovativeness among the farmers in the study area is
satisfactory.
Extension Media Exposure: 69% of the farmers had medium
level of extension media exposure, where 17% had low and
14% had high level of extension media exposure.
Time expend for TV watching: Majority (63%) of the
farmers watched TV programmes for moderate duration while
24% for long time and rest 13% for short time in a week. This
means that most of the TV viewers (87%) watched the TV
programmes for moderate to long time in a week.
Table 1 Facts on the characteristics of the respondents
Characteristics Categories % Respondent Mean SD
Young (up to 32) 17
Middle age (33-52) 68 42.37 10.22
Age Old (above 52) 15
Total 100
Effectiveness of Agriculture Related Television Programmes for Disseminating Agricultural Information Perceived by the 103
Farmers of Bangladesh
Journal of Agroecology and Natural Resource Management
p-ISSN: 2394-0786, e-ISSN: 2394-0794, Volume 4, Issue 1; January-March, 2017
Educational Illiterate (0) 6
Qualification Primary level (1-5) 41 5.77 3.28
Secondary level (6-10) 53
Total 100
Family size Small (2-4) 14
Medium (5-10) 73 7.26 2.98
Large (above 11) 13
Total 100
Farm size Small (0.21-0.70) 13
Medium (0.71-2.37) 71 1.53 0.84
Large (above 2.38) 16
Total 100
Farming Low experience (3-5) 12
Experience Medium experience (6-19) 69 12.38 7.14
High experience (20years and above) 19
Total 100
Annual family Low (Up to 69) 11
Income Medium (70-257) 74 163.63 94.32
High (above 258) 15
Total 100
Agricultural knowledge Low (Up to 18) 12
Medium (19-25) 67 22 3.49
High (above 25) 21
Total 100
Attitude towards Low favorable attitude 14
Agriculture related (16-26)
TV programmes Medium favorable attitude 76 33.67 6.80
(27-40)
High favorable attitude 10
(41-48)
Total 100
Innovativeness low (14-18) 21
Medium (19-25) 58 21.99 3.62
High (above 25) 21
Total 100
Extension Media Low exposure (12-17) 17
Exposure Medium exposure (18-24) 69 20.83 3.58
High exposure (above 24) 14
Total 100
Overall exposure of the respondents:
The overall exposure scores of the respondents
to agriculture related TV programmes ranged from 12 to
28 with mean standard deviation of 21.02 and 3.30,
respectively (Table 3).Agricultural information
disseminated to the farmers through the agriculture
related TV programmes was perceived medium effective
by a large (68%) number of farmers while 18%
perceived high effective and 14% of the farmers
perceived low effective. This means that the information
presented to the farmers were mostly medium to high
effective (86%) in terms of their application in the real
situation.
Table 2 Distribution of farmers on the basis of the
effectiveness of agriculture related TV programmes
as perceived by Farmers
Category Frequency Percent Mean Standard
Deviation Range
Low (12-
17) 14 14
21.02
3.30 16
Min:12
Medium
(18-24) 68 68
F H Chudhury, M R Amin2, M M Adhikary, M A Islam and M Rokonuzzaman
Journal of Agroecology and Natural Resource Management
p-ISSN: 2394-0786, e-ISSN: 2394-0794, Volume 4, Issue 1; January-March, 2017
104
High
(above 24) 18 18 Max:28
Total 100 100
4. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SELECTED
CHARACTERISTICS WITH THEIR PERCEIVED
EFFECTIVENESS OF AGRICULTURE RELATED
TELEVISION PROGRAMMES:
The farmers found television programmes moderately
effective for disseminating agricultural information. Among
10 selected characteristics of farmer’s level of education,
farm size, annual family income , agricultural knowledge,
attitude towards agriculture related TV programmes
,innovativeness, extension media exposure, time expand for
TV watching of the respondents had significant positive
relationship with their perceived effectiveness of agriculture
related TV programmes for the dissemination of agricultural
information. Whereas age and farming experience were
negatively significant relationship with their perceived
effectiveness of agriculture related TV programmes for the
dissemination of agricultural information. However family
size of the farmers had no significant relationship with the
effectiveness of agriculture related TV programmes for
dissemination of agricultural information as perceived by the
farmers.
The mass approach in agricultural extension uses a single or
combination of different communication media to a large
client group, and are usually organized at the national level
and decentralized for implementation at regional, district and
upazila levels. They are aimed to create awareness and interest
on issues that concern the majority of the population Teoh
(1995). Extension service in Bangladesh today has a network
of number of large professional extension workers at national,
regional, district, unit and block levels. Many national
programs and projects were undertaken for agricultural
development from 1950s, which resulted very limited success
in the transfer of agricultural technology. In order to expedite
the process of technology transfer, the donor agencies now
give more emphasis on communication media. Television is
an important and effective powerful communication media.
Television plays a great role to gain and retention of
knowledge. It is a great communication media through which
farmers get different types of information. In television
Agriculture related programmes are now promising. These
Programmes not only to deliver various information but also
visually and practically show its practice. Through which
farmers are really get benefited.
Table 3: Relationship between the selected characteristics with
their perceived effectiveness of Agriculture related television
programmes Selected Characteristics correlation( r) with
perceived information by TV programmes
Sl
No Items Correlation value
1 Age -.404**
2 Educational Qualification .256*
3 Farm size -.080
4 Family size .286**
5 Farming experience -.410**
6 Annual family income .280**
7 Agricultural knowledge .394**
8 Attitude towards agriculture related
TV programmes .482**
9 Innovativeness .480**
10 Extension Media Exposure .425**
11 Time expend for TV watching .459**
Television plays an important role disseminating agricultural
information. Most of our farmers are illiterate, and they do not
get enough opportunity to communicate with different
agricultural organization or even SAAO. As a result they do
not get the modern technologies as well other agricultural
information. Here Television plays a vital role for not only
conveying messages but also it makes those messages easily
understandable through its visual quality. As a result farmers
become interested to practice them to get good results. The
findings of the study will be very helpful to planning and
execution of various agricultural practices to the farmers in
this area.
5. LITERATURE CITED:
[1] Hoque, M.M. (1990). The Role of Development Communication
in Agriculture: Status and Trends with Special Reference to
Language. An Article, Presented in Development
Communication for Agriculture. B.R. Publishing Crop., New
Delhi.
[2] Kashem, M.A. (1992). Sampresaran Biggan. Dhaka: Bangladesh
Packing Press.
[3] Rahman, M.M .2003. Use Of Television By The
Farmers in Adopting Selected Technologies M.S.
Thesis, Dept. of Agricultural Extension Education,
Bangladesh Agricultural University Mymensingh
[4] Teoh, C.H. (1995). Extension Methods: Mass Approach, Guide
to Extension Methods,
