Women's empowerment is an important policy agenda that is critical for developing countries like Bangladesh to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). The prime objective of this paper was to examine whether community savings groups can truly improve the economic conditions of women which turns into women's empowerment in fishing communities or not. The propensity score matching (PSM) and logistic regression technique were incorporated, and required data were collected from Community Savings Groups (CSG) interventions and non-CSG villages of coastal Bangladesh. Quantitative data were collected from 615 women comprising 306 CSG participants (treatment group) and 309 non-participants (control group). The results affirm CSG group members were economically more solvent and less dependent on borrowed money than non-CSG group members. Improved economic indicators (savings, income and expenditure) of CSG households make the foundation of attaining women's empowerment for the intervened group. The findings revealed that CSG women performed better in various dimensions of leadership capacity than non-CSG women. Econometric analysis confirmed positive impacts of CSG interventions on savings, gross household income, earning from catching fish, alternative income-generating activities (AIGAs), expenditure, and women's empowerment. The initiatives of CSG not only generate economic well-being but also contribute to women's empowerment. Financial access, improved literacy and an enabling environment for the productive engagement of women reduce gender inequality in fishing communities. To sustain the benefits of CSG, establishing institutional linkages (advisory and financial), legality/registration of CSGs from the government authority, and facilitation of alternative IGAs are crucial.

This paper verifies the statement that “women contribute greatly to growing crops year-round, but their work is not recognized” through in-depth empirical investigation of their participation in rice and vegetable production and farm decision-making processes in Northwest Bangladesh. Interviews were held with 240 randomly selected couples (husband and wife interviewed separately) to document their views of the female’s participation in crop farming activities and farm and household decision-making. The findings reveal that women play a substantial role in farming and are increasingly involved in farm management, but they are generally overlooked or under-valued by their male counterparts. Looking at crop-specific participation, among 18 different activities of the rice production cycle, men recognized that their spouse had “high” participation in three activities, “strong” in one, “moderate” in five, and “weak” in nine. A similar result was found for activities in vegetable production. In both cases, men’s recognition differed from that reported by their spouses. Logistic regression modeling against eleven variables (selected from the intersectionality and patriarchy literature) revealed six statistically significant variables that influence men to consult with their wives regarding farm decisions. The dominant variables were spouse education (years of schooling), spouse Non-governmental organization (NGO) membership, and the number of hours per day that the spouse spent working on the farm. The article provides a new insight into family dynamics in household and farm decision-making processes. The collection and analysis of both counterparts’ (husband and wife) views provides empirical evidence that not only is women’s participation in agricultural activities and decision-making under-recognized, but that higher education and being involved in NGO activities have a positive influence on male perceptions of women’s contributions. While these findings may not be universally applicable, the framework (using intersectionality and patriarchy indicators together with logistic regression modeling) is highly adaptable. Application in other parts of Bangladesh would reveal perceptions in those regions, and would support a more comprehensive approach to future policy intervention towards gender integration into crop farming in line with promoting women’s education and NGO participation.

Diverse set of income generating activities may have varying effect on household’s welfare situation. This study intends to assess the extent of different income diversification strategies on rural household welfare. A total sample of 153 households from three districts of Bangladesh was randomly selected. Considering simultaneous causality between different livelihood strategies and welfare indicators, the Two Stage Least Square (2SLS) methods with instrumental variable was applied to estimate impact of the strategies on household welfare. Household per capita expenditure was treated as the welfare indicator which includes both food and non-food expenditures. The findings show that involving in any type of non-farm activities jointly with farming has a significantly positive effect on the household’s welfare. Among different non-farm activities, participation in wage employment and migration along with agricultural activities ensured significantly higher per capita household expenditure. On the other hand, the impact of currently participation in only agricultural activities on household expenditure is insignificant. Besides, Farm size, higher education and infrastructural facilities also play an important role in improving household’s welfare. Therefore, policy should be directed to create opportunities to participate in non-farm activities through establishment of small and medium industries, especially agro-based industries in the rural areas. J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 17(1): 73–79, March 2019

Smallholder farmers in Bangladesh face many difficulties. A trend towards fish farming has opened new opportunities in recent years. This research focuses on the concern, whether smallholders could improve their gross margins by improving the allocation of the available physical and non-physical resources. Combinations of the participatory, qualitative and quantitative methods were used for primary data collection. A linear programming based modelling approach shows that farmers can increase the farm gross margin by reallocating the land in the model solution. Essential requirements, e.g. determined by household consumption requirements, determine parts of the resource allocation. The remaining land is in tendency allocated to fish farming; where one specific fish farming alternative is dominant to others. In the scenario analysis, all farming groups keep the same proportion of land use pattern until a certain level of price change, beyond that crop farming is selected. Scenarios modifying the available fish feed show the significant sensitivity of this resource on the land allocation.

The paper investigated the magnitude of social parameters’ impacts on effective use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in agricultural marketing by the farmers. In addition, how farmers identify information sources and how they access to those sources in selected areas of Jamalpur district were also examined. Purposive sampling method was used in this investigation and data were collected from eighty farmer’s thorough survey questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, Likert scale and multivariate regression model were used to analyze the data. Multivariate regression model was specified and estimated to identify the factors affecting use of ICT by farmers. The outcome of this study highlights important factors for the use of ICT. It is evident from the findings that the users of ICT are getting better quality information and are hence making significantly better decisions on all aspects of agricultural marketing. Regression analysis revealed that two factors i.e. cultivated land of farmers and level of education were the important factors of using of ICT by farmers. Modern ICT tool such as mobile phone was the most used device by the farmers due to low price and availability. They collected most of the information regarding the marketing activities of their produce by mobile phone from other progressive farmers, traders and agricultural extension workers. Social imperative findings of this paper might be helpful for the policy maker to emphasis on further extension of mobile phone based agricultural marketing information system in Bangladesh. J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 17(2): 226–231, June 2019

Some influential variables that are import to farmers in Northern Bangladesh regarding land use decisions for farmlands, where such options are possible, were explored in this study. A multi-stage sampling procedure was followed to select the study area and the sampling unit. We selected four sub-districts in Mymensingh district, a suitable area in Bangladesh for freshwater fish farming: Mucktagachha, Trishal, Phulpur, and Bhaluka. The PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) method was used to remove the problem of simultaneously selecting all criteria for land use decision-making, hence revealing the effects of some important variables on decisions on land use made by farmers. PROMETHEE model gave equal preference to rice over fish farming after all criteria were considered simultaneously. Although fish farming total return was about 6 times higher than rice farming, farmers were more interested in rice farming because of three major influential criteria: it requires less labor, operates at lower costs, and has zero conversion cost associated with rice farming