Assessing the Status of Literacy of Sustainable Agriculture among Agricultural Experts: A Case Study of Tehran and Alborz Provinces

The purpose of this study is to evaluate experts’ sustainable agricultural literacy (knowledge, attitude, sensitivity and concern) level and to assess effects of socio-economic variables (gender, educational level, experience and information source on their sustainable agricultural literacy level. A total of 180 agricultural experts in Tehran and Alborz provinces are questioned by using of a questionnaire which includes four parts; knowledge (17 items), attitude (10 items), sensitivity (18 items), concern (19 items). Experts had participated in courses of sustainable agriculture. Data analysis showed that experts had positive attitude and high degrees of concern and sensitivity toward sustainability of agriculture; however they had low to moderate levels of sustainable agricultural knowledge. In order to evaluate the role of socio-economic variables on experts’ sustainable agricultural level, six separate one-way MANOVAs were conducted. The results revealed that; a) there is significant effect of gender on experts’ sustainable agricultural literacy regarding to concern, b) there is a significant effect of educational level and work experience on experts’ sustainable agricultural literacy regarding to knowledge and concern; and c) there is a significant effect of information sources e.g. workshops and media about sustainability of agriculture on experts’ sustainable agricultural literacy. Finally, based on these results, planning aiming to promote the literacy of sustainable agriculture was proposed.