Impact of Rural Development Initiatives on Cooperatives

In Bangladesh rural cooperatives started its journey to boost up agricultural production and reduce indebtedness and improve socio-economic condition of the poor farmers. Cooperative societies organize farmers into a formal group to use credit, new farm technologies and training for skill and awareness building for their socio-economic development. Through different activities of cooperative, it was found that a several degree of positive changes on the socio-economic and cultural life of rural people have occurred. The study indicated that at the initial stage, only the members of cooperative started using modern agricultural technologies instead of traditional and indigenous agricultural technologies for their production. The cooperative members first introduced modern farm implements like, deep tube well for irrigation, power tiller for ploughing, modern varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers etc. Later on other villagers also started using mechanization following cooperative members. Government could also provide different financial supports, subsidies and agricultural marketing facilities to the cooperatives for greater benefit of the villagers.