Abstract
The study aimed at determining farmers' perception of utilizing nutrient sources for integrated plant nutrient system (IPNS) towards sustainable crop production and exploring the relationships of their selected characteristics with their perception of utilizing nutrient sources for IPNS. Data were collected during September 2007 to March 2008 through pre-tested interview schedule from randomly selected 232 respondents from Gouripur union of Gouripur Upazila under Mymensingh district. In addition, Focus Group Discussion, Scored Causal Diagrams and case study were also employed to obtain necessary information from the study area. The selected 16 characteristics of the farmers were considered as the independent variables and their perception of utilizing nutrient sources for IPNS constituted the dependent variable. It was found that during 1960's cowdung, crop residues, oilcake, ash, etc. were used enormously and in 1970's and onwards a decreasing trend was already started. With the advancement of time use of cattle and poultry manure tended to be reduced and on the other hand use of chemical fertilizers tended to be increased. Crop residues were extensively used for fuel purpose. Kitchen wastes had a noteworthy use as compost and manure for crop field. Ash was exploited in the form of pesticide (55 percent) and as manure (10 percent) which goes to the field. In rural areas rice husk was mainly used as animal/poultry feed. This had no recognizable use for soil improvement. The perception score ranged from 23 to 73 against a possible range of 0 to 75, with an average of 54.3 and standard deviation 9.01. The highest proportion (63.4 percent) of the respondents had high perception, 31.9 percent had medium perception and only 4.7 percent had low perception. Education, training received, access to / manure, participation in IPNS practice, daily time use, credit received, organizational participation, utilization of information source, production orientation, planning orientation, attitude towards use of agro-chemicals and environmental pollution awareness of the farmers showed positive and significant relationship with their perception of utilizing nutrient sources for IPNS. Path analysis indicates that the variation on farmers' perception was mainly due to the contributions of five predictors viz. training received, participation in IPNS practice, organizational participation, production orientation and environmental pollution awareness. Perception of IPNS model indicates that 72.1 percent of the total variation in farmers' perception status has been explained by these predictors. The five relevant characteristics. having significant effects improvise their contribution to perception status and among those, environmental pollution awareness provided the highest contribution explaining 31.7 percent variation in the perception status followed by 14.0 percent variation by participation in IPNS practice, 12.4 percent by production orientation, 7.3 percent by training received and 6.7 percent by organizational participation. The major root causes of low participation in IPNS were poor organic waste management, decreased livestock population, less availability of organic matter and improper crop rotation practice. Hence, provision of necessary measures by the concerned authority and progressive change in socio-economic structure of the society are desirable for improvement of the farmers' perception of utilizing various organic sources of nutrients.