بررسي عوامل تاثيرگذار بر دانش كشاورزي پايدار ذرت كاران نمونه استان فارس

Factors Affecting Sustainable Agricultural Knowledge of Exemplary Corn Growers in the Province of Fars, Iran

Conservation of natural resources while producing agricultural products is considered to be an important principle in a broad concept of sustainable agriculture. National sustainable agricultural development emphasizes on sustainability of production and environment being free from chemical pollutants. The main objective of this study was to assess the farmersʹ technical knowledge as related to sustainable agriculture as well as determine its relationship to farmersʹ professional characteristics. The result indicated that the majority (70%) of the farmersʹ technical knowledge in sustainable agriculture was in "average" level. This supports similar findings of other researchers in other provinces. Statistically significant relationship was found between sustainable agriculture knowledge and farmersʹ accessibility to technical information as related to sustainable agriculture (r-0.64). The relationship is characterized as "relatively strong" between these two variables. There was a negligible relationship found between farmersʹ level of sustainable agriculture knowledge and the production level. This indicated that their technical knowledge in sustainable agriculture did not necessarily amount to gains in production, because sustainability knowledge would produce economic gain in a long-term basis of sustainable farming system, rather than immediate short term gain. Multivariate Linear Regression results indicated that farmersʹ education, their accessibility to sustainable knowledge, as well as their farming systemsʹ sustainability explained 48% of variance in sustainable agriculture knowledge variable.