A SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF BUFFALO FARMERS AND MANAGEMENT OF BUFFALO AT COASTAL AREA OF MIRSHARAI IN CHITTAGONG.

Abstract

The study was designed to investigate the socio-economic status of buffalo farmers, management practices and profitability of buffalo at coastal area of Mirsharai upozila under Chittagong district in Bangladesh. A total of 50 buffalo farmers were randomly selected from this area. The data was collected through the pre-tested questioner. The investigation revealed that the middle aged (31-50 years) farmers were more involved in buffalo rearing compared to old (>50 years) and young aged (<30 years) farmers. More than 80% of the farmers have primary educated. Almost 92% of the selected buffalo farmers were engaged with different agricultural activities. The buffalo farmers basically have no training skills but practiced buffalo rearing as their family profession where 22% of them are influenced by the neighboring buffalo farmers. The main purpose of rearing buffalo was supply as meat source. The feeding system of buffalo in the selected area was mainly extensive system. Farmers fed their buffalos with locally available roughages and tree leaves but they did not practice concentrate feeding. About 62% of the farmers used own capital and rest of them took bank loan and/or NGO’s loan for rearing buffaloes. The price of a pair of buffaloes for meat purpose ranged from Tk. 90000.00 to 150000.00. The annual rearing cost of per buffalo was only Tk. 10600.00 while a gross return was 19400 BDT per buffalo. The BCR (benefit cost ratio) of buffalo found about 1.83 in this study. So the buffalo rearing in the selected areas was profitable. According to the result of this study it is clear that the socio economic status of rural farmers was improved by buffalo rearing although some management practices need to be improved and artificial insemination (AI) facility should be introduced throughout the country.