The Requirements of Establishing Innovative Rural Organizations to Improve Food Security from Rice Grower's Perspective

Rural innovative producing organizations can increase farmers' incomes and improve food security by providing services to farmers. The specific objectives of this paper were to identify the economic, social-cultural, infrastructural, political, educational, and technical requirements for innovations in rural institutions to improve food security of farmers in Mazandaran Province, Iran. The total population of this study was 113,141 farmers in Mazandaran Province and by using Cochran formula 216 were selected through cluster random sampling method. The Delphi method was used for qualitative part of analysis, which was done in a three-phase distribution of questionnaires and interviews with rice experts. For each of the requirements, items of interest were added and removed, and a table of items including the most points (to a maximum of70%) was extracted. A Bayesian analysis was used for by using AMOS16and SPSS16 software. Based on the results of Bayesian analysis the economic requirements had the greatest impact on establishing innovative rural institutions to improve food security of rice growers. It was also found out that socio-cultural, political, infrastructural, educational, and technical requirements, respectively could play an important role in helping rural institutions to enhance food security in rural areas.