REQUIREMENTS OF BUILDING CAPACITY OF SOUTH SINAI FARMERS IN PROTECTED CULTIVATION

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Agricultural Extension, Socio-Economic Division, Desert Research Center, Egypt

Abstract

The current research aimed to identify the opinion of respondent farmers to the importance of the sources of information they are exposed to, to identify the technical support requirements and economic rehabilitation of farmers in South Sinai for the management of protected cultivation, and to get the negative effects of the problems of the protected cultivation in South Sinai. It has also been targeted determining the relationship between some of independent variables of the farmers and requirements of the technical support for the management of protected cultivation. Twenty eight respondents of farmers, representing about 20% of the total grinners of the protected cultivations center and city of Ras Sudr and Tor Sinai have been selected in terms of the number of farmers’ center and cites of South Sinai.
The main findings of the present study are indicated as follows:
1. Present experience as well as neighbors is considered the must important source of information, whereas the rural broadcast programs took level of respondent interest.
2. Farmers are in need of relatively high level of knowledge with respect to the whole operation related to the protected cultivation. In this concern, the middle –and high needs categories reached 37.8 and 40.2%, respectively. The adjusted mean of their cognitive needs is around 0.37.
3. Concerning the requirement of necessary economic support to orercome the problems confronting the protected cultivation, the development of programs controlling pests and diseases that infect vegetable in the study reign has taken the first priority from the respondents, view point at accuracies valued at 97%, followed by the implementation of extension programs dealing with the dissemination of the techniques, than raising the farmers awareness of how nutrients are applied at occurrence valued to 95.1 and 92.7%, respectively.
4. The most common problems opposing farmers are the lock of processing accessories (i.e. plastic ,wire…etc.), the high cost, and inadequate sources of information within the areas, where protected cultivation is practiced, as the adjusted mean values reached 0.91, 0.90 and 0.86, respectively.
5. There is an inverse correlation between each variable; i.e. the previous experience and awareness, the farmers attitude forward regeneration from one side and the extent at which the farmers are actually in need of knowledge. On the other hand, the fact that has been indicated by the values of the simple person correlation coefficient i.e. -0.31 and -0.47, respectively.
6. There was an effective relationship between educational status, full time work of farmers, accessibility to greenhouses sources, and the type of crops, from one hand and level of the cognitive need on the other hand in this regard, the relative contingency coefficient (ca2 ) values are 25.30, 13.02, 18.70 and 18.70, respectively.
            Accordingly, five recommendations have been proposed so as to add contribution to other efforts aiming at building the capacities of farmers concerned with the protected agriculture in South Sinai, Egypt.

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