Barriers of Urban Agriculture Development from Perspective of Agricultural Extension Experts in Zanjan Province, Iran

In the last century, the growth of urban population, rural population decline and the loss of agricultural lands have caused many problems in these communities. Doing agricultural activities within and around the city is rather new subject that its development leads to increase urban sustainability. The purpose of this study was identifying factors preventing the development of agricultural activities in the cities and around them. Descriptive survey method was used in this research. A questionnaire used to collect data. The validity of the questionnaire was approved by a panel of faculty member and related experts. Pre-test and calculating Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were used to measure the reliability (α =0.93). Agricultural extension experts in Zanjan province formed the population of this study (N=168) and 91 samples were selected using stratified random sampling. Based on exploratory factor analysis, the most important obstacles to the development of urban agriculture was summarized in six factors including: lack of legal, financial and educational support, weakness in the agricultural knowledge and expertise and lack of training course, prevalence of pests and diseases and bothering pet animals, lack of relationship between agriculture-related institutions and citizens, lack of suitable land and water for agriculture in city, and tend to apartment building. These factors explained 65.76 percent of the total variance of barriers to urban agriculture development