Dr. Rabab Said Abd El-Kader Mohammed :: Publications:

Summary: The provision of food is considered the biggest challenge to meet the population's needs of food in light of the growing population and increasing consumer awareness, so the state has adopted many policies to achieve development through a policy of economic liberalization, which depends on freedom of integrated marketing of agricultural products and non-interference in their price, and work on the rationalization of the agricultural inputs and outputs through the setting of integrated and continual agricultural development programs and the applied agricultural science at all stages of agricultural production and marketing replaces the traditional farming methods in many agricultural products. Rural woman plays an important role in the implementing of rural development in general and agricultural development in particular and has many roles in various aspects of life, She manages the home, cares her family, and face the economic and social problems facing the family next to her multiple contributions in the agricultural production and marketing processes and her decisions are considered a kind of production and marketing inputs and she transfers and markets her agricultural and animal products from the village market to the city market. She also markets the products of butter, cheese, dairy and vegetables, so she is an important element in her society. The agricultural extension is important organization which can play an important role in teaching women how to market their products as marketing of agricultural products is one of the areas of agricultural extension work by making a desirable behavioral changes knowledge, skills and attitudes of rural women through diffusion of the thoughts and recommendations of the marketing and their satisfaction to implement it that makes a desirable economic and social results for rural women. Since rural women produce more than half of the food in developing societies, so we had to work on the integration of rural women in the production process and encourage them to establish small-scale rural industries as they generate income. The results of most studies conducted in the field of rural women's activities relating to marketing of agricultural products indicates to a shortage of the knowledge of rural women in the field of marketing of agricultural products, which calls for a marketing system develop the extension work in the field of marketing of agricultural products. This study aims to: 1- Identifying the agricultural products that rural women contribute in marketing it and their marketing places. 2- Identifying the circulation processes of rural women's activities in the field of marketing of agricultural products. 3- Identifying the degree of the role of agricultural extension in the field of marketing activities of agricultural products from rural women through: A- Identifying the degree of rural women's knowledge of the items of marketing activities of agricultural products. B- Identifying the sources of rural women's knowledge of the items of marketing activities of agricultural products. C- Identifying the degree of implementation of rural women to the items of marketing activities of agricultural products. 4- Identifying the relationship between the degrees of the role of agricultural extension in the field of marketing activities of agricultural products from rural women and some studied independent variables. 5- Estimating the contribution ratio of independent variables in explaining the total variance in the role of agricultural extension. 6- Identifying the most important problems facing rural woman in the field of marketing of agricultural products and her suggestions to solve them. The study was conducted in Meet Kenana village, Toukh district, Sheplanga village, Benha district and Nawa village, Shebeen El-Qanater district Qualyoubia Governorate. The total rural women of the study are all rural women land holders in the three villages who are growing vegetable crops and fruit that need to marketing activities and rural woman contributes with a significant role in carrying out them amounting to 1802 rural women, a systematic random sample was drawn from them from each village representing 17.6% of total rural women amounting to 317 rural women. Data were collected during August and October 2009 by personal interview using a pre-tested questionnaire. Tabular presentation frequencies and percentages, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Pearson simple correlation coefficient and stepwise regression were used to analyze data statistically. The most important results of the study, which could be reached as follows: - The results indicated that rural women are marketing a wide variety of agricultural products. Vegetable crops came in the first rank among the agricultural products marketed by rural women, followed by dairy products, then poultry and birds, and eggs, while crops and fodder crops, then fruit and marketing of cattle and home's animals came in the fifth to eighth ranks respectively. - The results showed that rural women market their products in the village market, then in the house, then to the middle traders and then to wholesaler, while the district market, the governorate market and Agricultural Society came in a low position. - The results showed that the activities of the rural women are in the following order: the process of grading of agricultural products, the screening process, combined, packaging, display the agricultural product, securing finance for the marketing, accounting municipal, transfer the product to market, contact the middle traders, hire the means of transportation of the agricultural product to market, storage, work of the accounts, collect market information and calculating process. - The results indicated that 24% of rural women are in the category of low-knowledge, 29.3% of them are in the category of medium knowledge and 46.7% of them are in the high knowledge category and 53.3% of rural women stay with knowledge of low and medium of the studied activities items and the overall average degree of rural women's knowledge of marketing activities items of agricultural products was 1.27 degrees by 63.71%. - The results showed that 43.1% of rural women the governmental extension sources of the Ministry of agriculture are their sources of knowledge of the studied activities items, while 56.9% of them the non-governmental extension sources are their sources of knowledge of the studied activities items and they contributed with the governmental extension sources in diffuse about 83.3% of the information items as mixed guidance sources. - The results showed that that 63.7% of rural women are in the category of low sources of knowledge, 23.1% of them are in the category of medium sources of knowledge and 3.2% of them are in the high sources of knowledge category. - The results indicated that 24.6% of rural women are in the category of low-implementation, 32.2% of them are in the category of medium implementation and 43.2% of them are in the high implementation category and the overall average degree of rural women's implementation of marketing activities items of agricultural products was 1.18 degrees by 59%. - The results showed that 27.1% of rural women are in the category of low-agricultural extension role, 62.5% of them are in the category of medium agricultural extension role and 20.4% of them are in the high agricultural extension role category and 89.6% of rural women had low to medium level of degrees of the agricultural extension role and this shows the weakness of agricultural extension role in the field of marketing agricultural products activities. - Degrees of the agricultural extension role in the field of marketing agricultural products activities was correlated positively and significantly at 0.01%with each of: the age, degree of education, area agricultural, Attendance at the agricultural service centers, the degree of exposure to sources of information, the degree of opinion leadership, the degree of the trend toward modernization, the degree of the trend towards agricultural extension, the degree of informal social participation , the degree of values of saving, the degree of values of consumption, while there were no significant relationship between the role of agricultural extension and the degree of values of physical security the degree of values of productivity. - The regression relationship between the independent variables that are relevant significantly to the role of agricultural extension in the marketing of agricultural products indicated that we can retain seven variables among the eleven variables related significantly to the role of agricultural extension in the marketing of agricultural products for use in the step wise multiple correlations and regression and it is the degree of the trend toward modernization, the degree of opinion leadership, age, athe degree of the trend towards agricultural extension, the degree of exposure to sources of information , area agricultural and attendance at the agricultural service centers, and found that these variables all contributed to the predictive ability to explain with 86.5% of which is 69.4% for the trend toward modernization and 13% for the degree of opinion leadership and 1.3% for age and 1.3% for the degree of the trend towards agricultural extension and 0.7% for the degree of exposure to sources of information and 0.5% for an area agricultural and 0.3% for the degree of attendance at the agricultural service centers. - The results showed that there were problems facing rural women in the marketing of agricultural products and most important of these problems is the lack of female extension workers to work with and training of women, the market prices does not suit with the cost price, the absence of clear criteria for grading, the lack of information about market prices, scarcity of programs which concerned with rural women and the marketing of her agricultural products and the lack of guidance publications and magazines about the marketing activities of agricultural products, and the most important proposals made by rural women to solve problems is to increase the number of female extension workers which trained rural women, work to improve the market price to match the cost price, work to find clear criteria for the grading of agricultural products, provide all market information through the extension centers in villages , the planning and implementing of extension programs that interested in rural women and marketing their agricultural products and provide guidance publications and magazines about the marketing activities of agricultural products. Applied benefits: Based on the findings of the study can be summarized from the results of the practical benefits of this study as followed: - In the light of the results showed that 53.3% of rural women stay with knowledge of low and medium of the marketing activities items so we must condense efforts undertaken by the Agricultural Extension for giving rural women knowledge and skills that lead to greater knowledge of rural women about the marketing activities of Agricultural products and convince them to be implemented properly, which leads to increase the quality of their products , reduce wastage and develop methods of marketing subsequently increase the income of rural women and raise their standard of living. - In light of the results illustrated that the government extension sources of the Ministry of Agriculture has published (16.7%) of the items of marketing activities of agricultural products, while the rest of the activities which is about (83.3%) from mixed guidance sources (governmental and non-governmental organizations), therefore extension workers should use the local sources which have proved a source of confidence for rural women, trained and provide them with everything that is new, especially for the low-and middle items of information of rural women and that leads to increase the role of agricultural extension in increasing the awareness of rural women about the marketing activities information. - As rural women had lower implementation information about the marketing activities of agricultural products, so we should open communication channels with rural women by setting up seminars and training courses that help provide rural women new knowledge about the marketing activities of agricultural products, and also we should train extension workers on how to connect knowledge to rural women and gain their confidence so that they can accept new knowledge and be a part of their implementation behavior. - The central administration of agricultural extension should have a clear role in providing guidance for the advancement of the field of marketing of agricultural products by establishing seminars and instructional meetings, and training rural women to implement new recommendations in the field of marketing, which improve the characteristics of the agricultural product, and this requires the intensification of extension programs so that become the extension is the main source of knowledge about marketing activities of agricultural products from rural women. - Future researches should care about other variables not included in this study which may have significant participation in the predicting ability for the change in degrees of the role of extension in the in the field of marketing activities of agricultural products from rural women.