Perceptions of Iranian Agricultural Extension Professionals on Sustainable Agriculture Concepts

The purpose of this study, which has been conducted by a descriptive survey method, was to study the attitudes and perceptions of Iranian agricultural extension professionals on the concepts and thoughts of sustainable agriculture in the four dimensions of production efficiency, economic viability, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability. The target population of this study consisted of faculty members of universities in agricultural extension education, extension head in provinces and extension specialists of deputy of agricultural extension and farming system in the Ministry of Agriculture in Iran. A sample consisting 87 members were selected through simple random sampling. The instrument used for assessing the attitude of respondents on the concepts of sustainable agriculture was a questionnaire by reliability 0.72. Riplies of respondents indicated that the attitude and perceptions of Iranian agricultural extension professionals regarding concepts of sustainable agriculture was at the moderate level (M=78.18, SD=7.23). The social responsibility dimension by mean four out of five (SD=0.52) and the economic viability by mean 2.91out of five (SD=0.56), showing the best and poorest attitude of respondents on the concepts of sustainable agriculture. The results of Kruskal Wallis test revealed that statistically, there were no significant differences in the perceptions of respondents on the concepts of sustainable agriculture in terms of their age, level of education, years of experiences and organizational position.