A Comparative Study of the Relative Importance of Agricultural Information Sources for Date Palm Farmers in Some Desert Areas

This research aimed to compare the relative importance of agricultural information sources for palm farmers in some desert regions through achieving the following sub-goals: 1) Determine the sources of agricultural information from which the researchers obtain their information on date palm, and compare the relative importance of these sources from their perception. 2) Determine the type of the existing relationship between the socioeconomic characteristics of farmers and their exposure level to agricultural information sources. 3) Determine the degree of contribution of the relevant independent variables to the explanatory overall variation to the degree of respondents' exposure to agricultural information sources in the studied desert areas. 4) Extract the research contents and using them as a basis for setting the pillars to raise the efficiency of agricultural information sources in palm cultivation aiming to develop a future extension and information services. The research was carried out in three desert regions by selecting a simple random sample of 411 respondents, representing (10.0%) of the farmers, according to the statistics lists of the farmers who own palm trees. These lists are from the Statistics Department in the agricultural branches in the different regions. The first region is Kharga Center in the New Valley Governorate. The sample is 156 respondents from the farmers of El-Munirah village, and El-Sherka village; 71 and 84 respondents respectively. The second region is Bahariya Oasis in Giza Governorate; the research was conducted on a sample of 140 farmers from two villages Al-Bweiti and Al-Hayz; the sample was 45 and 95 respondents respectively. The third is Siwa Center in Matrouh Governorate; the research was conducted on 115 farmer respondents in two villages Al-Maraki and Agromi; the sample was 50 and 65 respondents respectively. The final data was collected through personal interview with the respondents using a questionnaire, from July 2018 to October 2019, and then it was uploaded and scheduled on SPSS program.The Pearson correlation coefficient was used in analysing the data, to test the relationship between the degree of farmers’ exposure to the sources of agricultural information in the research areas (as a dependent variable) and the studied independent variables. Step-wise model was used to determine the contribution ratios of each significant, independent correlation variable in clarifying the total difference of change regarding the exposure degree to the agricultural information sources in the research areas. In addition to numerical count, frequencies, percentages, mean, standard deviation, and weighted average mean are used to display some of the achieved results, using SPSS program.