Exploring Smallholder Farmers’ Attitudes toward Mechanized Agriculture: An Empirical Investigation from Selected Haor Areas of Bangladesh

Bangladesh's agricultural sector is undergoing significant transformation due to mechanization, addressing labor scarcity and high wage rates among producers. The study aimed to assess the smallholder farmers' attitudes toward mechanized agriculture in haor areas and to identify the factors that could influence their attitudes. The study, conducted in 8 sub-districts from 4 districts, involved 600 smallholder farmers surveyed face-to-face setting using a structured questionnaire. The focus variable, smallholder farmers’ attitudes toward mechanized agriculture, was examined using 16 statements (formulated using stimulus-response and reinforcement theory) with a five-point rating scale. The responses were categorized as "strongly disagree", "disagree", "no opinion", "agree", and "strongly agree" with positive statements receiving 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively, and negative statements receiving reverse scores. The majority (81.60%) of the smallholder farmers had a favorable attitude toward mechanized agriculture. Organizational engagement, level of education, age, farm size, farming experience, yearly family income, and training received on agricultural machinery were identified as the significant influential variables, explaining 68.8% of total variations. Promotional activities like need-based training with simplified training modules and more organizational engagement should be promoted by government bodies like the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and NGOs such as BRAC and Caritas. Both young, energetic, and experienced farmers should be motivated to utilize farm machinery more efficiently. The Ministry of Education and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should come forward with their adult education program that will ultimately help in improving the living standard of our smallholder farmers.