The Effect of Knowledge and Attitude on the Behavior of Truck Farmers in South of Kerman Province toward Agribusiness Management

Today, many farmers face problems in their production, such as economic bottlenecks, lack of production inputs, high institutional costs, and so on. Farmers' mastery to business management can reduce these problems to a large extent. Therefore, due to the importance of the subject, this descriptive- correlational research was conducted to investigate the effect of knowledge and attitude on agricultural business management behavior. The statistical population included all truck farmers in the south of Kerman Province (N=75000). The statistical sample of the study included 382 farmers who were selected by multi-stage random sampling according to the sampling table of Kerjesi and Morgan.  The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by panel of experts and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to calculate the reliability of the questionnaire that an acceptable value was obtained (θ=0.85-0.95). The results showed that farmers were moderate in the management of agricultural business. They were better off in terms of farm staff management but had the greatest weakness in strategic farm management. The knowledge score of the respondents in the field of agricultural business management was 11.58 (out of 20), which shows that their agricultural business management is slightly higher than the average level. However, 73.3% of the respondents had a positive attitude towards their business management. Path analysis showed that knowledge and attitude on agribusiness management behavior had a significant positive effect. Therefore, training courses should be planned and implemented to improve the management of farmers' agricultural business.