A Study of the Socioeconomic Determinants Associated to The Performance of the New Lands Agricultural Cooperatives at El:Behira Governorate

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Research Institute.

2 Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Research Institute

Abstract

The agricultural cooperatives play a central role in Egyptian economy, through the cooperatives roles on community development, production services, subsidized agricultural inputs, technical support, financial responsibilities and social activities. Accordingly the study aims to identifying the socioeconomic determinants of the performance of the new lands cooperatives.
The study is applying the multidimensional ILO/DANIDA scale of cooperative performance including the community development, facilitating social services, productive investment, agricultural inputs, minimizing the production cost, technical support, resources protecting, training and logistics and communication. Using he socioeconomic variables: goal attainment, self reliant ratio, marketing, annual sales, technical support, finance, training and communication.
The study was carried out on four villages at El-Behira governorate (Alghomhoria, New Edko, El-horrya and Nasser villages), and data were collected by personal interviews using a pre tested questionnaire from 155 cooperative members using a random systematic sample. The questionnaire was coded and data were statistically analyzed applying the simple correlation and multiple linear regression techniques.
The participation on cooperative activities alone explains about 17% of the variance in the cooperative performance and the values of collective work variable explains about 9% of the variance of cooperative’s performance, the marketing opportunities explains about 4% of the variance in the dependent variable and the finance of productive projects variable explains about 3% % of the variance of cooperatives performance. The results were conceptualized around applied linkage that connects four practical fields; encouraging member participation, activating the values of collective work, the marketing of commercializing products and the financial support to the  agricultural projects

Main Subjects