Rural Farm and Non-Farm Employment Linkages in Bangladesh

The importance of rural non-farm employment is increasing day by day. Bangladesh is a agricultural based country. Most of the agricultural labour gets work on crop season only. The agricultural labour who have no skill on non-farm activities, they have no other alternatives to get job other than farm activities. Level of skill is a major determinants of having non-farm employment. There is a backward and forward farm and non-farm employment linkages. Backward activities includes input supply from non-farm sector to farm sector and forward activities includes processing of farm outputs. The research studies shows that the farm to non-farm backward, forward and total employment linkage both for Aman and Boro rice were 0.16, 0.41 and 0.58 respectively, which meant that for producing, processing and marketing of Aman and Boro rice per hectare, total of 16, 41 and 58 maydays of backward, forward and total employment were created in non-farm sector against 100 maydays of employment in farm sector. For reducing poverty in a country like Bangladesh it would be a solution to skill up the poor agricultural labour on different non-farm trades and need to diversify crop production.