An evaluation of technical and economic capacity of farmers of Rural Production Cooperatives. Case Study: Neishabour

The main objective of this article is to investigate the impact of cooperatives on the technical and economical empowering of farmers and agricultural development in the villages of Neishabour. The method of this research is analytical – descriptive and it has been carried out in 2013. The statistical society is composed of 4685 members and non-members of cooperatives in twenty villages of Neishabour. The sample size via the Cochran formula and stratified sampling technique has been calculated to be 252. Data collection has been performed through documentation and field study. For data analysis, the SPSS software package and the T-Student Test have been employed. The results of statistical analysis based on 13 economic indicators revealed that the average economic stability of the members is 2.64 which is slightly higher than 2.47; that is the average economic stability of non-members. Independent samples T-Test results between members and non-members revealed that the probability value is 0.004 which indicates that there exists a significant difference between average economic stability of members and non-members. The T-Test results with hypothetical mean of 3 and 4 showed that the majority of indicators are less than the average. Therefore, the impact of cooperatives in economic development is evaluated to be below the average limit and cooperatives could not play an important role in increasing the economic empowerment of farmers.