DOES e-AGRICULTURE IMPACT ON FARMERS’ EMPOWERMENT IN BANGLADESH?

Sheikh M. M. Rashid, Muhammad Z. Haque, Md. Rafiquel Islam

Abstract


Empowerment is the utmost desire for the sustainable development all over the world. Present research was designed to investigate the impact of e-Agriculture on empowerment stratified as economic, family and social, political, knowledge and psychological empowerment. The methodology of this study is an integration of quantitative and qualitative methods based on data collection in Bhatbour Block of Dhighi union under Sadar Upazila of Minikganj District. Data were collected from 133 e-Agriculture users and 45 controls. Descriptive statistics, t-test, Multiple regression (B) were used for analysis. Most of the farmers (53.4 percent) gained low empowerment through e-Agriculture, while 46.6 percent of them had medium empowerment. The results showed that e-Agriculture had significant impact on the empowerment of farmers in Bangladesh. Based on the findings, it is recommended that government should implement and popularize e-Agriculture based projects on a massive scale for the empowerment of the farmers.


Keywords


e-Agriculture, Empowerment. Information, Extension services

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