Farmer's Attitudes toward Education-Extension Courses on the Conservation, Reclamation, and Development of Natural Resources: A Case Study of Miandasht Rural District, Kashan

It was the objective of the present survey to investigate wheat farmers’ attitudes toward education-extension courses on the conservation, reclamation, and development of natural resources and the factors involved. The target population in this study consisted of 953 wheat farmers in Miandasht rural district neighboring the city of Kashan. Given the distribution of the statistical population, use was made of the simple random sampling method to select a representative statistical sample and the Krejcie and Morgan Table was employed to determine a survey statistical sample of 275 wheat farmers from the study area. Data were collected using a questionnaire whose validity had been approved by a panel of experts and its reliability was approved by a pilot study and Cronbach alpha coefficients which were calculated to be above 0.7 for the different sections of the questionnaire. The findings of the survey indicate that there exists a significant positive relationship between the variables of level of education, total land area owned, total annual income, annual agricultural income, and satisfaction with the education-extension programs, on the one hand, and the dependent variable of attitudes toward the effects of such courses on the conservation, restoration and development of natural resources. Also, the independent variables of total land area owned, total annual income, annual agricultural income, and satisfaction with the courses were able to explain interactively 46% of the variation observed in the dependent variable of farmer attitudes. The findings of the present survey can be exploited by managers and authorities to develop appropriate education-extension courses that aim at the sustainable and wise exploitation of natural resources. Moreover, the results can be most importantly used to improve wheat farmers’ attitudes to the conservation, restoration, and sustainable development of natural resources while also enhancing farmers’ livelihoods by focusing on the non-farming economy in rural areas.