Socioeconomic impact of rice-cum-fish culture in a selected areas of Bangladesh

The study examines the impact of the rice-cum-fish culture and the rice-mono culture on the rural households at Muktaghachha upazila of Mymensingh district in Bangladesh. Data were collected from 100 farmers of five villages following stratified random sampling technique. Activity budgets were prepared and comparisons were made through the tabular and statistical analyses. Both the rice-cum-fish culture and the rice-mono culture were profitable business for the farmers. However, farmers earned about 3 times higher profits from the rice-cum-fish culture than the ricemono culture. Per hectare net returns of the rice-cum-fish culture and the rice-mono culture were Tk. 15345.00 and 5389.50, respectively. Rice yield, fish consumption, total cost were increased by 11.4, 14.5 and 48.9 percent respectively while human labour employment was increased by 9.4 percent in the integrated rice-cum-fish culture compared to the rice-mono culture. The study clearly hints that the rice-cum-fish culture provides greater scope for higher returns and employment opportunities of human labour than the rice-mono culture.


Introduction
Bangladesh is one of the developing countries in the world.Rice and fish are the staple foods in Bangladesh.Given the security of land and the need to meet the demand of the increasing population, alleviating poverty and malnutrition, there is no alternative to the rice-cum-fish culture (Gupta et al. 1997).Fish is the main source of animal protein, providing an average 8.4 gm per day, or 13.3 % of the average per capita total intake of protein (63 gm) (BBS, 2010).Not only the adequate supply of carbohydrate, but also the supply of animal protein is significant through rice-fish farming.Fish, particularly small fish, are rich in micronutrients and vitamins, and thus human nutrition can be greatly improved through fish consumption (Larsen et al. 2000;and Roos et al. 2003).
Integration of fish with rice farming improves diversification, intensification, productivity, profitability, and sustainability (Ahmed et al. 2007;and Nhan et al. 2007).It can optimize resource utilization through the complementary use of land and water (Frei and Becker, 2005).It is suggested that integrated rice-fish farming is ecologically sound because fish improve soil fertility by increasing the availability of nitrogen and phosphorus (Giap et al. 2005;and Dugan et al. 2006).The natural aggregation of fish in rice fields inspired the combination of rice farming with fish to increase productivity (Gurung and Wagle, 2005).It is found in several studies that rice-cum-fish culture become able to enhance net benefit by 64.4% and yield by 5% ( Purba, 1998).So, it has been proved that the rice -fish integration is quite attractive both in environmental and economic points of view.Though several researchers attempted to study environmental and biological outputs of rice-cum-fish culture, studies on economic output is scant.So, the researchers attempted to undertake the study with the following objectives: i. to assess the relative profitability of using rice-cum-fish culture compare to rice monoculture; ii. to determine the effects of the rice-cum-fish culture in changing yields, total costs, fish consumption and labour employment as compared to the monoculture and; iii. to identify the major problems in conducting integrated rice-fish farming.

Materials and Methods
In this study, 100 farmers who adopted both the rice-cum-fish culture and the rice-mono-culture were randomly selected from five villages namely Goshbari, Satrasia, Rajpur, Kumargata, and Kandapara of Muktagachha Upazila in Mymensingh.The period covered in this study was the whole production of the rice-cum-fish culture and the rice-mono-culture in the boro season of 2009.The required data were collected during the March to May, 2009.A stratified random sampling technique was followed in this study.Survey method was used to collect data and analysis was done to achieve the objectives set for the study.Activity budgets were calculated and statistical comparisons were computed.Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the impact of different independent variables on total household income of the respondents which was specified as: Where, Y = Total annual income of the household a = Constant term X 1 =Age of the respondent X 2 =Number of members in the family X 3 =Number of working persons in the family X 4 =Education level of the respondent X 5 = Size of the total cultivable land X 6 = Distance of the district headquarter market X 7 =Lengths of Katcha road from houses to the nearest highway e = Error term Activity budgets (Dillon and Hardaker, 1993) of the rice-cum-fish culture were prepared using the following algebraic equation: Where, π J = per hectare net return or profit of the jth product (Tk/ha); Y j = total quantities of the j th main product per hectare (kg/ha); Py j = per unit price of the j th main product (Tk/kg); B j = total quantities of the by product per hectare (kg/ha); Pb j = per unit price of the by product (Tk/kg); X i = total quantities of inputs used for producing per hectare product; Px i = per unit price of the i th inputs; FC = amount of fixed cost per hectare involved in producing the products; j = 1 and 2 (Rice and Fish) i = 1, 2, 3 ...n (i.e., human labour, fertilizers, seed/seedlings, irrigation water, power tiller/draught animal, etc.) Apart from the profitability analysis, undiscounted benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was calculated dividing per hectare gross return by gross cost.

Results and Discussion
Relative profitability of the rice-cum-fish culture compared to the rice mono culture The integrated rice-cum-fish culture (considering home supplied labours were paid) per hectare gross return, gross cost and net return were calculated Tk. 83235.00,67890.00,and 15345.00,respectively and undiscounted BCR was 1.23.In the case of rice-mono culture, these are appeared to be Tk.50989.50,45600.00,5389.50, and 1.12, respectively.Considering home supplied labours were not paid, the corresponding figures were Tk.83235.00,59071.5.00, 24163.5.00, and 1.41 for the integrated rice-cumfish culture and Tk.50989.50,38439.00,12550.50, and 1.33 were for rice-mono culture, (Table 1).The estimated coefficients and related statistics of the multiple regression analysis was done to measure the impact of different, influencing variables on total household income, are summarized in Table 3. Table 3 shows negative effect of farmer's age on annual income -pointing out that old farmers' income is relatively less than young aged farmers.The reason could be, the elders are less willing to adopt new technology including rice-cum-fish farming.According to Hossain (1989), older farmers are less likely to have contacts with extension agents and are less willing to adopt new practices and modern inputs.Furthermore, younger farmers are likely to have some formal education, and therefore might be more successful in gathering information and understanding new practices, which in turn will improve their technical efficiency.The result also shows that farm size is positively related to annual income which indicates better managerial ability of larger farms.Distance of the district head quarter market and lengths of katcha road from houses to the nearest highway are negatively related to annual income.These two variables are the indicator of infrastructure and the result tells that lack of infrastructural facility reduces respondents' income.There is no suspect about the positive role of infrastructure to increase farm income as well non-farm income.The modern rice producer benefits significantly from better infrastructure; and badly developed infrastructure leads to negative effects on both productivity and income Rahman (2003).

Problems of the rice-cum-fish culture
Farmers were asked to rank the problems they encountered in culturing fish in the rice fields.Major problems were diseases, high labour demand, unexpected mortalities, high cost in general, and high cost of plot preparation in particular.Eighty seven percent farmers claimed that diseases were a major problem, 69% farmers identified higher labour requirement a major problem for them and 65% found unexpected mortalities as a constraint in rice-cum-fish culture.Again, 57% and 55% of the respondents mentioned about high cost in general and high cost of plot preparation in particular as problem for running their enterprise.

Conclusion
The rice-cum-fish culture is an innovative farming system in which, rice is the main enterprise and fish fingerlings are taken as additional means to secure extra income.Rice-cum-fish culture is not only reducing income poverty of the farmers but also improves the yield of paddy, create employment opportunity, and increase nutrient intake which brings food security for them.The farm-specific variables used to explain income indicate that farmers, who are of young aged, with larger farm size and better infrastructural facility -are able to earn more income.Despite of some problems which are facing in ricecum-fish farming, Proper policy and planning, positive attitude of administrators and extension workers, free access to information/training facilities for the farmers, required size of fingerlings at reasonable prices at the appropriate time will encourage the farmers to practice rice-cum-fish culture largely.

Table 3 . Estimated coefficients and related statistics of the multiple linear regression analysis
** Significant at 1 percent level.

Table 4 . Problems for integrating fish culture with rice farming as ranked by farmers (Percentages are in parentheses)
Source: Field Survey, 2009