Factors Affecting Farmers’ Skills on Optimal Use of Agricultural Water Resources (Case Study: Bahar County, Hamedan Province)

This study has aimed to analyze the farmers’ skills on optimal use of agricultural water resources; since the skills are a reflection of knowledge, attitude, and facilities. The target population of this study was all farmers from Bahar County, Hamedan province (N=1931) that 271 of them were selected by random sampling according to Cochran formula. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire which its validity confirmed by a group of relevant experts and the reliability of the variables was calculated using ordinal alpha coefficient (α=0.85-0.93). There were significant differences between Knowledge and skills about optimal use of agricultural water resources of Farmers that participated in related training courses and those didn’t participate, according to the results of Mann-Whitney test. Also farmers categorized based on the land ownership, information resources and water supplies were significantly different in terms of their water management skills, according to the results of Kruskal-Wallis test. According to the results of Spearmans’ correlation tests, there were positive significant relationships between skills with variables of knowledge, attitude, and number of land plots; while this variable was negatively and significantly correlated with the amount of the annual production, total hectares of rainfed lands, and the amount of using chemical fertilizers. Moreover, based on the result of ordinal regression, 50.9% of the skills variations could be explained by three variables as the farmers' knowledge and attitude and number of land plots.