Dr. Fatma Ahmed Mustfa Mohamed :: Publications:

The date palm is one of the fruit trees that can be benefited from economically and has the possibility of exporting, manufacturing and increasing family income in its production areas in Egypt. The research aims to analyze the productive, competitive and indicative performance of Egyptian dates. To find out the strengths, maintain and develop them, a review of the most important indicators of the competitiveness of Egyptian dates showed that the apparent comparative advantage index increased in value from the correct one in the average period (2015-2020) estimated at about 5.55%, which means that Egyptian date exports enjoy a comparative advantage in global markets. The export efficiency of Egyptian dates during the period (2015-2020) was greater than 100%, as the annual average of export efficiency amounted to about 384.3%, which indicates the presence of export efficiency for Egyptian dates, and the results indicated that Egypt’s share in the Indonesian market amounted to about 40.63%, While it amounted to about 0.02% in the Moroccan market, and about 12.22% in the Malaysian market, during the average period (2015-2020). Date producer. The results were shown the total performance level of the agricultural extension workers surveyed for the extension activities related to them in promoting the production and circulation of Egyptian dates, that (26.7%) of the respondents had a low level of performance for extension activities related to this item, while (40%) of them had a medium level of performance, and it was found that (33.3%) of the respondents had a high level of performance. The previous results indicate a significant weakness of the role of agricultural extension in promoting the production and circulation of Egyptian dates, and to determine the extent of the independence of the relationship between the performance level of the surveyed agricultural extension agents for extension activities related to the advancement of production and circulation of Egyptian dates and the independent variables studied, the statistical hypothesis was formulated saying that “there is no dependency relationship with Statistical significance between the dependent variable represented in the degree of performance of the surveyed agricultural extension agents for extension activities related to the advancement of the production and circulation of Egyptian dates and between the studied independent variables, and to test the validity of this hypothesis, the Ka2 test was used. The study sample is: age, upbringing, academic qualification, experience in the field of agricultural extension, obtaining training courses in the field of production and handling of date palms, and the level of contact with date palm farmers, where the significance value of all studied independent variables is less than (0.05) and based on what We accept the alternative hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis, and to determine the intensity of the relationship Between the performance level of the surveyed agricultural extension agents for extension activities and the studied independent variables, the compatibility coefficient was calculated and found to be (0.721, 0.707, 0.620, 0.701, 0.749, 0.803), respectively, which indicates a relatively strong relationship. The results showed that the most important production problems facing agricultural extension workers when performing their role in promoting the production and circulation of Egyptian dates is the absence of a clear guiding policy to advance the production and circulation of Egyptian dates, the weakness of the guiding role provided to farmers to develop their productive skills, and farmers' adherence to inherited experiences and environmental customs and traditions. The most important solution proposals were the importance of having a guiding strategy to develop farmers’ knowledge of the market and train them to produce quality and provide material and moral support to them to solve their problems and develop their skills, while the most important marketing and export problems were the distance to some places of production and the difficulties of transportation and storage, which increases export costs, followed by mobilization And transferring dates to factories incorrectly in ways that are not subject to the quality and health rules applicable in food manufacturing, and the lack of a prior export policy. Marketing is based mainly on individual judgments of major producers and manufacturers, and the most important solution proposals were to improve the industrial infrastructure, using technology to package dates, and It is necessary to work on finding assembled cold chains in both A taqqa in which the farmer, the warehouse or the complex and the factory participate, and the generalization of the use of plastic boxes for packing dates, and the need to provide adequate support for the extension body and train them to develop the farmers’ knowledge of market requirements and product quality specifications to compete in global markets.