الفهرس 
الباب الاوليوجد فقط 14 صفحة متاحة للعرض العام
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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
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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%.
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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.
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