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المستخلص AN ANALYTICAL STUDY FOR THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSiON IN MARKETING SOME CROPS IN QALUBIA GOVERNORATE BY Taher Mohamed Aboul Atta Mohamed SUMMARY Achieving food security is one of the main goals of agricultural development in the scope of the new economical trends aiming to liberalize Egyptian economy. It is obvious that a food gap resulted from the rapid increase of population, augment of consumption awareness and the raising demand for food. One of the best ways to narrow this gap is to apply scientific solutions that help to raise agricultural productivity along the agricultural production processes. Of these solutions, .reducing the losses of agricultural crops was detected to be an effective way to increase supply against demand in the food market On the other hand, fruit production in general and Citrus, Apricot and Banana in specific have high contribution in the agricultural income. Communicating recommendations concerning reducing the losses of fruit production are u””Jaliy done through extension efforts by different extension systems/approaches. Yet, extension efforts pay greater attention to production processes with a rather less concernto marketing processes. However, wrong handling practices since harvesting till the product reaches merchants or end users spread among farmers leading to increase losses especially in fruit production. OWing to thescarcity of research in this area, this study aimed to identify the Agricultural Extension role regarding marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana through : determining farmers’ knowledge concerning technical recommendations of ideal handling processes of the studied fruits, identifying information sources of farmers for these recommendations and essential extension services provided to farmers in the area, defining the variables affecting this knowledge and its contribution ratio in predicting that knowledge. Hence, this study was conducted to: 1~ . Identify farmers’ knowledge concerning recommendations of marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana. 2. Identify Extension role in marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana. 3. Define the relationship between the farmers’ knowledge degree concerning recommendations of marketing Citrus, Apricot and 1 Banana, and each of personal, social, economical and communicational variables. 4. Define contribution percentage of the significantly correlated independent variables that explain the total variance in farmers’ knowledge degree concerning recommendations of marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana. 5. Identify needed extension services to be presented to farmers regarding marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana. Three systematic random samples were drawn amounting to: 50 Citrus growers in Kafr EI-Gemal village, 50 Apricot growers in EI-Amar EI-Kobra village and 50 Banana grower in Meet EI-Attar village, Qualubia Governorate. Data was collected by personal interview using three pre-tested questionnaires according to the three crops studied during the last three months of 1996. Simple correlation, Step-wise, Coefficient of determination, means and percentages were used to analyze data statistically. The main results of the study was: 1. Most of farmers’ knowledge regarding marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana were relatively low. 2. Information sources concerning marketing Citrus, Apricot and Banana varied as follows: a. 18.40/0, 13.8°/0 and 15°/0 of Citrus, Apricot and Banana recommendations was conveyed to farmers through Public Extension related to Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR). b. 35%, 31.1 °/0 and 22.5% of Citrus, Apricot and Banana recommendations was conveyed to farmers through Public Extension related to governmental institutions other than MALR. . c. 33.3%, 44.8°/0 and 42.5°/0 of Citrus, Apricot and Banana recommendations was conveyed to farmers through private extension resources. The results revealed the week role of Public Extension in diffusing the technical recommendation of the three studied crops. 3. Farmers’ knowledge degree of Citrus marketing recommendations was correlated positively at 0.01 level with each of farmers attitudes towards change and the respondent frequent visits to service centers. The total contribution of these two dependent variables to explain the variance in the farmers’ knowledge rated to 41.8%. 2 4. There was a positive relation at 0.05 level between farmers’ knowledge regarding marketing Apricot and each of: the average yield per feddan and the degree of leadership. Because of the interconnectedness between these independent variables, only the coefficient of determination of leadership degree was calculated and amounted to 0.981, that is significant at 0.05 level, which explains 9.81 % of the total variance in the dependent variable. 5. Farmers’ degree of knuwledge regarding Banana marketing recommendations was correlated positively at 0.01 level with farmers attitudes towards Agricultural Extension. This variable explains 13.7 of the total variance in the dependent variable. 6. Five extension services delivered by public extension was mentioned by each crop growers. In Citrus marketing the five services mentioned by farmers ranged between a high limit of 40% for the recommendation of not to store fruits on trees, and a low limit of 4% for the recommendation of not to collect fruit before its complete cure. For Apricot, the high limit was 380/0 for holding meetings and forums about the date and picking up fruits, and a low limit of 10% for the distributing extension bulletin and magazines related to marketing. As for Banana, the upper limit was 34% concerning cutting the fruit branch end, and a lower limit of 8% for the recommendation of the marketing date for Banana. Applicable use of these results can be summarized as follows: 1. Extension programing planners and execut1ves in the Central Administration of Agricultural Extension and Horticultural extensionists must take into consideration acknowledging Citrus, Apricot and Banana growers and others involved in marketing processes of the technical recommendations of marketing these crops especially those scored average or low degrees in the study. 2. Public Extension must take full part in diffusing marketing recommendations specially in fruit production. 3. Planners and executives of extension programs must consider the following variables: Farmer’s attitude towards change, frequent visits to service centers when aiming to acknowledge farmers with Citrus marketing recommendations, leadership degree when aiming to acknowledge farmers with Apricot marketing recommendations and farmers’ attitudes toward Agricultural Extension when aiming to acknowledge farmers with Banana marketing recommendations as they detected to contribute significantly in changing farmers knowledge. 4. It is recommended for the coming research to pay attention to the personal and situation variables not included in this study and might contribute significantly in explain the variance .in the farmers’ knowledge. 3 |