 2 in Sunamganj and 3 in Sylhet district. In socioeconomic part of the study, we checked the all-720 farm household data; and for cost and income of potato production, we used 48 sample households those are cultivated potato. To grasp the diversity of income, we decompose the variance in net income of potato production into different factors using the following relations, which are well known.
Figure 3. Map of the study areas (Sylhet region) in Bangladesh.
where, M and Y are stochastic variables, such as the costs of inputs or incomes from different sectors; V is variance and Cov is covariance.
Table 1 exhibits the basic statistics of farm households. The study found that household size is moderately higher than the national average (4.8) [5]. An important and interesting finding of the study is that almost one-fifth of farm households were controlled by the female, which is really an encouraging situation for farming households, as their involvement in decision-making. Majority (56.7%) of the people aged 15 years and over was literate, while 53.3% were women. In most of the villages of Bangladesh, women’s access to education is increasing considerably and changing their living status by doing small jobs, petty business, and becoming entrepreneurs over the years.
Occupation is the most important feature for a household to sustain in the earth. Household income fully depends on better occupation, and income is the basic requirements for improved household food security. Figure 4 provides the percentage of household head and their involvement in different income earning activities. At the root label of the Sylhet region, most of the people involved in farming, accounted for nearly 43% followed by business/trade, daily labor and other income generating activities. Bangladesh is predominantly an agrarian society where most of the farm household participated in farming that made commendable progress in food production [20]. However, income share from farming in total household income is not so significant. Because, service sector represents the main source of household income in Bangladesh [21].
Table 1. Summary statistics for the sampled farms.
Figure 4. Principal occupations of household head.
hectares of land, medium farmers who have the 0.60 to 1 hectare of land, and large farmers who has more than 1 hectare of land. Figure 5 represents the percentage of farmers operating the different size of farming land in the study areas. The highest proportion of farmers belonged to the small farmers group accounted for 46.39% which means that in Sylhet region a small percentage of farm household has the large farming land and the similar pattern are exist in overall rural areas of Bangladesh [20]. Another significant finding is that the lowest percentage of farmers was marginal.
Land tenure pattern is a common scenario in farming all over the world. In Bangladesh, the farmers are following different types of land tenure arrangements: pure tenant, mixed tenant, and farmers own cultivated land. In pure tenant and mixed tenant, farmers are following the sharecropping, cash lease, and both. The leading tenure arrangement is following by the farmers in Bangladesh are sharecropping where the production is shared by the landowner and cultivator in different proportions that are fixed before the cultivation. Figure 6 illustrates the different land tenure arrangements in rural areas of Sylhet region in Bangladesh. The highest portion of farmers was pure tenant (36.8%) which implies that a large portion of farmers has no own land for farming, and they operate other lands under the sharecropping or lease arrangement. Meanwhile, under pure tenant situation, near about 73% of farmers followed the sharecropping whereas it was almost 60% under mixed tenant. A minority of farmers followed cash lease and a noticeable portion of them involved in both sharecropping and cash lease.
Figure 5. Distribution of operated land by farm size groups.
Figure 6. Land tenure arrangements in Sylhet region.
maize, jute, potato, chili, onion and so on. In Table 3, we discussed the agricultural income and individual crops. Sylhet is particularly acquainted for remittance income and it is very common in this region that many people are living abroad and send remittance for their family [21]. Table 2 presents the significant share of total household income comes from remittance and highest in Sylhet district. Fish and livestock income are lowest share in total household income except in Sunamganj since fish is important sources for income. The study region specially, Sunamganj and Habiganj is eminent with haors as well as sweet water fish [6].
Table 2. Average and percentage of income (BDT) sources share by districts in Sylhet region.
Table 3. Percentage of crops income share by districts in Sylhet region.
Table 3 shows the shares in percentage of individual crops in total agricultural income by districts. Rice is the dominant crop in all districts where boro rice variety lead the major share. However, other crops have also the remarkable contribution in total agricultural income of household. Other crops included all types of crops, vegetables, pulses, and fruits produced by the farmers and not separately mentioned in the Table 3. In major crops, potato is an important crop in Bangladesh [19] since the share is very small in the study areas. Due to the topographical location and soil condition of the study areas potato is not familiar crop in Sylhet region. Sylhet is a unique and almost rice monoculture-cropping areas [20] and considerable part is under tea plantation for hilly topography. However, farmers are growing this crop simultaneously with other crops and production is increasing.
From the above results, we found that agriculture is a key source of household income in Sylhet region, and cereal crops lead the highest share similar to other areas of Bangladesh. Potato has very small share in total household income since highest in Moulobibazar 2.30 percent of total agricultural income. This is the important research question why potato share is very low in total agricultural income of this region. The next section estimates the costs of production and returns for potato cultivation by farmers of Sylhet region.
This section mainly focused on potato production and its relevant costs consideration as well as returns from potato cultivation in Sylhet region. Figure 7 presents the per hectare average costs of potato production in the Sylhet region which delineates that seed cost is the main input cost of potato production, followed by irrigation and hired labor cost for farmers. Generally, potato production depends on sowing seed, but the cost of potato seed is higher. It is revealed that around half of the input costs for potato production were expensed for seed purchasing.
Figure 7. Average cost share for potato production.
Table 4 presents a clear scenario for costs and output of potato cultivation in the study area. The study found that per hectare total cost was about BDT 37283.51 and sale price from the produced potato (7801 Kg/ha) was BDT 65443.5. It means potato is a profitable crop for farmers as they earn a considerable amount of return from its production after the reduction of costs. Most of the potato farmers in Bangladesh use their own collection of seed and traditional irrigation techniques.
Although potato cultivation is profitable, most of the farmers are producing rice as the main production crop followed by potato. One important reason behind the farmers’ priority on rice production rather than other crops is that they want to ensure their daily’s required food intake because rice is the staple food in Bangladesh and has relatively provide more calories which is essential for their food security. Each farm household used a small portion of their land for potato cultivation and it is depending on the location of land. Normally low and wetland is not suitable for potato production but in the Sylhet region, most of the areas are low land and in the rainy season, most of the cultivated areas affected by flood in every year [19]. Consequently, the average area of potato production in this region is very low, though; potato is the probable best alternative crop for farmers in the Sylhet region if they use high land for potato production rather than rice. From the Table 4, we found that seed and irrigation is the most important cost for potato cultivation, and farmers are used fertilizer, compost, pesticide, irrigation etc. for maximum yield. These costs variables have close relation that can affect each other and consequently in potato yield. The next section we check the correlation between costs of potato production.
Table 4. Production costs (BDT/ha) for potato in Sylhet region.
Table 5 represents the correlation results of costs for potato production, and it is documented that some of the pairwise variable has shown significant correlation between the variables, remarkably for fertilizer and pesticide; compost and pesticide. This dual relationship between the variables would affect each other’s [22]. In this analysis, bivariate correlation (no controlling variables) is used and in Figure 8, shows that some explanatory variables suspect to have close relationship with significant correlation, notable in pesticide and compost; and pesticide and fertilizer.
From Table 4, we found that some cost share has the significant roles to increase the total cost for potato production and where seed and irrigation was highest. Now, we want to check the disparity of costs that induced the variation of total cost. Based on correlation check, we suppose that there is a significant correlation between compost and chemical fertilizer, pesticide and chemical fertilizer, and pesticide with compost. Table 6 presents the results of variation of total cost disparity and show the factors responsible for large variations in cost from potato production.
Table 5. Correlation between costs of potato production.
Figure 8. Correlation between costs of potato production.
Table 6. Total cost disparity of potato production.
As shown in Table 6, variances in seed, Irrigation, chemical fertilizer, compost, and hired labor costs are high across in Sylhet region. The highest 28.5% of inequality of gross cost for potato production was explained by the inequality of seed cost, while 17.52% inequality of gross cost was explained by inequality of hired labor (Figure 9). These costs were the main factors