A comparative study on boro rice production under solar and non-solar irrigation practice: A case study of the northern region in Bangladesh.

The study aimed to find out the factors and reasons affecting strengthening renewable energy technologies of boro rice production through solar irrigation practice in Bangladesh. Personal interview technique was used to collect the data on solar and non-solar based boro rice farmers in the selected areas of Rangpur and Bogura district. Randomly eighty households (where forty of solar irrigation users and remaining forty of non solar users) were interviewed. Cobb-Douglas production function and descriptive statistics were used to explore the relationship between inputs and output. The major findings of the study are that socio-economic characteristics of small, medium and large farmers were different from each other in respect of age, literacy rate, farm size, and occupation, livestock ownership status, household income and expenditure. The Cobb-Douglas production found that, the solar irrigation cost, seed cost, harvesting cost and transportation cost have significant effect on solar irrigation based boro rice production and seed cost, labour cost, harvesting cost, transportation cost have significant effect on non-solar irrigation based boro rice production. Net Return and BCR for solar based per hectare rice production in Rangpur and Bogura were Tk 28580.66, Tk 21943.71 and 1.49, 1.46 respectively and for non solar based per hectare rice production in Rangpur and Bogura were Tk. 27745.40, Tk 22144.64 and 1.46, 1.43 respectively. Thus, solar practice is relatively more profitable. It suggested that the renewable based solar irrigation is assisting on sustainable crop production and also study found that it is economically viable, socially accepted and environmentally friendly.