Abstract
The study aimed at exploring the livelihood improvement status of the participating farmers through special project for food security and finding out the relationship between some selected characteristics of the farmers and their livelihood improvement status. Attempts were also made to determine the direct and indirect effect of the significant characteristics of the farmers on their livelihood improvement status. Data were collected during December 2008 to May 2009 through pre-tested interview schedule, Focus Group Discussion, and case study from randomly selected 240 respondents from the village Gobrakura, union and upazila Haluaghat under Mymensingh district. The selected sixteen characteristics of the farmers were considered as the independent variables while their livelihood improvement status constituted the dependent variable. It was found that the observed score of livelihood improvement status of the participating farmers ranged from 22.22 to 77.04 percent while the possible range was 0 to 100 percent. The mean livelihood improvement status was 49.78 percent with a standard deviation 10.89. Among the farmers, more than two thirds (67.92 percent) had medium status of livelihood improvement while 16.25 percent had low and 15.83 percent had high status of livelihood improvement respectively. However, the variation regarding different assets of livelihood was small, nevertheless the highest livelihood improvement status was observed in case of physical capital and the lowest was in case of natural capital. Nine out of sixteen selected characteristics of the farmers' viz. training exposure, farm size, innovativeness, annual family income, and credit received organizational participation, social empowerment, attitude towards improved technology and self-confidence had significant positive relationships where as the two characteristics viz. age and autocracy in decision making had significant negative relationships with their livelihood improvement status respectively. The characteristics viz. education, family size, cosmopoliteness, aspiration and risk orientation had no significant relationships. Path analysis indicated that the variation on farmers' livelihood improvement status was mainly due to the contributions of seven predictors' among these, age and autocracy had negative effect while the others viz. farm size, credit received, organizational participation, social empowerment and self-confidence had positive effect on the livelihood improvement status. Livelihood improvement status model indicated that 54.91 percent of the total variation on farmer's livelihood improvement status was explained by these seven predictors. The regression model suggests that better livelihood improvement status is the function of younger participants, minimized autocracy in decision making, larger farm size, more credit, greater organizational participation, more social empowerment and higher self-confidence.