AN ANALYTICAL STUDY FOR THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION IN MARKETING SOME CROPS IN QALUBIA GOVERNORATE
Abstract: 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-tally done through extension efforts by different extension systems approaches. Yet, extension efforts pay greater attention to production processes with a rather less concern to 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 the. scarcity 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 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 El-Gemal village, 50 Apricot growers in El-Amar El-Kobra village and 50 Banana grower in Meet El-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.
Publication year 1998
Availability location Agricultural Extension And Rural Development Research Institute Library Agricultural Research Center – 8, Cairo University St., - Egypt
Availability number 674
Organization Name
Country Egypt
Publisher Name: كلية الزراعة بمشتهر
Place: جامعة الزقازيق
Author(s) from ARC
Agris Categories Extension
AGROVOC
TERMS		 Marketing techniques.
Publication Type Master Thesis
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