Farmers’ Preference of the Farm Broadcasting in Receiving Agricultural Information

The purpose of the study was to investigate the extent of farmers’ preference of the farm broadcasting programme of Bangladesh Betar Sylhet in receiving agricultural information. The relationship between the selected characteristics of the respondents and their preferences was also explored. From 699 radio owners of thirty villages under the Sylhet division, data were collected from 148 radio owners during January to November 2007 through interview schedule. The findings revealed that 15.77% farm family of the selected villages possessed a radio and most of them (89.86%) were not aware about the farm broadcasting programme (FBP). Among the respondents 15.54% tuned their radio in varying interval to listen the FBP, 38.51% tuned to listen other programmes and 45.95% never tuned their radio at least once in last one year. Only 9.46% of the respondents had low preference, 5.41% had very low preference and the highest portion (83.78%) of the respondents had no preference to the FBP. About usefulness, 10.81% opined that the programme was low useful, 4.06% opined moderately useful and 1.35% opined not useful. Correlation study indicated that among the respondents’ selected characteristics, level of education, farm size and agricultural knowledge showed significant positive relationships and having additional recreation equipment showed significant negative relationship with their preference of the FBP.