Abstract
The study aimed at determining the extent of knowledge, skill and attitude of the farmers towards integrated pest management (IPM) and to ascertain the differences between FFS and non-FFS farmers on knowledge, skill and attitude towards IPM practices in modern boro rice. The study also explored the relationships between the selected characteristics of the farmers and their knowledge, skill and attitude towards IPM practices. Data were collected from a randomly selected 288 farmers of Sadar upazila under Magura district during January to May 2008 through pre-tested interview schedule, Focus Group Discussions (FGDS) and case study. Both the FFS and the non- FFS farmers differed significantly in respect of their knowledge, skill and attitude towards IPM practices. The FFS farmers had significantly higher knowledge, skill and attitude than those of the non-FFS farmers. The highest proportion of the FFS farmers had medium knowledge (46.5 percent), high skill (42.4 percent) and highly favorable attitude (41.7 percent) whereas; the same proportion of the non-FFS farmers had low (59.1 percent) knowledge, low skill (56.6 percent) and unfavorable attitude (56.6 percent) towards IPM in boro rice. The FFS farmers had significantly higher educational qualification, training experience, annual income, cosmopoliteness, extension communication exposure, innovativeness, awareness about IPM practices, adoption of IPM practices, risk orientation, decision making ability, aspiration and bigger farm size than those of non-FFS farmers. There were no significant differences between FFS and non-FFS farmers in relation to their age and family size. Out of 14. selected characteristics of FFS farmers, 12 namely, age, educational qualification, training experience, farm size, annual income, cosmopoliteness, extension communication exposure, innovativeness, awareness about IPM practices, adoption of IPM practices, risk orientation and aspiration had significant positive relationship with their knowledge. On the other hand, all selected characteristics except family size, cosmopoliteness and decision making ability of non-FFS farmers were positively correlated with their knowledge. The skill of FFS farmers had significant positive relationship with all their selected characteristics except age, family size and annual income. But in case of non-FFS farmers, training experience, farm size, extension communication exposure, innovativeness, awareness about IPM practices, adoption of IPM practices, risk orientation and aspiration showed significant positive relationship with the skill. Finally, the attitude of FFS farmers was positively correlated with all selected characteristics except family size and in case of non-FFS farmers it was positively correlated with all except age, educational qualification, family size and cosmopoliteness. However, the non-FFS farmers had significantly higher problems in using IPM practices than the FFS farmers. The major problems encountered by the FFS farmers in using IPM practices were lack of resistant HYV seed, fertilizer and diesel with its high price. Providing resistant HYV healthy seed, fertilizer and diesel with reasonable price, giving subsidy and training were the important suggestions made by the farmers to overcome the problems.