Agricultural development depends on increasing production and productivity and reducing risks threatening the agricultural sector and in the shadow of extension risk management that can be prevented of wasting and damage to agricultural crops and the provision of necessary domestic agricultural production, also providing export and currency-made to advance the country's development goals. Pay attention to the strategic location of Mazandaran in citrus products, natural hazards that threaten citrus production each year in the economic development, production and exports and providing sustainable livelihoods to farmers affected negatively. Agriculture and in particular the subdivision gardening, due to dependence on weather conditions, the brunt of climate change is undergoing, horticulture stable on long-term behavior growers to ensure the stability and productivity of the land in the future is created and the expectations and concerns of the community intended to provide a food healthy and security to protect the environment and natural hazards reduction is concerned.
The main purpose of this study was to investigate Mechanisms of Reducing Natural Disasters and Risk Management to Sustainable of Citrus Gardens in Mazandaran Province. The Population consists of all citrus farmers in the villages of 12 counties of Mazandaran province, a sample of 290 farmers was selected by using proportional random sampling method among 122361 citrus Orchard men. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire. The Validity of questionnaire was determined through sustainable agriculture experts of Mazandaran County and some faculty members at the University of Tehran, Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Agricultural Management and Development. The reliability was found to be acceptable. Diagnostic validity by using an average variance extracted (AVE) and reliability by using Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) were confirmed. To explain the mechanisms Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to modeling the structural equations using LISREL software, version 8.80.
According to the results of the ranking factors related to the mechanism in dimensions, "supportive - credit", "environmental - spatial", "socio-participation", "knowledge-awareness", "infrastructure-institutional "," educational –informational" and "economic factors" respectively were mostly mechanisms and strategies based on factor coefficient. Among the credit-supportive, "insurance" has had the most important role in the structure of credit-supportive factor, thus, according to the regional agricultural insurance and damages in the event that the actual performance of the target area is less than the guaranteed performance is a good solution. One of the major goals of sustainable agricultural systems is decreasing vulnerability and improving sustainable livelihoods in rural people. Therefore adoption of GAP technologies has emphasized to increase elimination of pest with minimum impact on the environment, human health and access to sustainable agricultural development, (achieve to environmental, economic and social sustainability) as well as attention to the sustainability of on-farm activities to certain safety and quality of food and non-food agricultural crops. According to the study, understanding and awareness of farmers to improve skills and farming and horticulture management techniques to reducing natural disasters and risk management and expand the participation of farmers in risk management, to develop processing and packaging industries, convenient and refrigeration practices for storage and preservation of agricultural and horticultural crops, in addition to communication channels network through demonstration farms, farmer field schools, workshops, field days, meeting, SMS, and information and communication channels carried by ICT as necessary solutions recommended. This Provides Information and knowledge share among orchardist and strengthening local associations and with each other. This process helps them to increase their awareness about mechanisms of reducing natural disasters and risk management to sustainable of citrus gardens and find positive attitude toward it. This output complete sustainability goals of agriculture through improving social sustainability. In order to access growers to timely sales service products, the establishment of a new extension system based on an available market with up to date and secure information as Marketing Information Services (MIS) could be a suitable strategy for orchardists in order to access sustainable development.
Type of Study:
Research |
Subject:
Special Received: 2017/12/22 | Accepted: 2017/12/22 | Published: 2017/12/22