Farmers’ Response to Flood Vulnerability in a Flood Prone Area of Narsingdi District

The purposes of the study were to determine the response ability of the farmers in a flood prone area and to explore the relationships between the farmers’ response ability and their selected characteristics. The study was carried out at Karimpur and Alokbali villages under Sadar upazila of Narsingdi district. Data were collected from a sample of 100 farmers by using interview schedules in October 2010. Farmers’ response ability was measured on the basis of their responses to the questions asked. Response ability of the farmers was measured across the seven aspects viz. housing condition, food and drinking water storage and handling, nutrition management, health care and hygiene, crop management, livestock and poultry management, and communication. Response ability in each of the responses was measured firstly and the overall response ability was measured by adding the score of all the responses. Correlation Coefficient (r) was used to explore relationships between the concerned variables. Majority of the farmers (64 percent) had medium response ability while 36 percent had low ability. There was no respondent having high response ability. Response ability of farmers was better in building a makeshift in high platform, protecting house from erosion, using bamboo-made bridge to connect latrine, using oral saline, safeguard, feeding livestock and poultry and keeping boat. But the same was very poor in collecting tube-well water, keeping carbolic acid, collecting locally available varieties of vegetables, taking pre-processed dry food, post flood jute seed sowing, fish culture and creating bamboo-made temporary bridges. Correlation analysis indicated that farmers’ education, farm size, organizational exposure, training exposure, extension media contact and knowledge on responses during flood of the farmers had positive significant relationships with their response ability.