Farmers’ Professional Satisfaction with the Rural Production Cooperative Approach

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the professional satisfaction of Rural production Cooperative (RPC) members. The secondary purpose was to investigate the professional characteristics of RPCs’ farmers, and determine the RPC members’ attitudes toward cooperative farming. The population of this study consisted of all 2000 ricegrowing members of four RPCs in rural Mazandaran, a northern province of Iran. Using a complete randomized sampling technique, 320 members of the population were selected for the study. A questionnaire consisting of three parts was designed to collect the data needed for the study. The results showed that cooperative farming substantially increased farmers’ crop yields and lowered their farm operational and maintenance costs. Members reported particular savings in the area of farm labor expenses. More than 90% of the farmers indicated that cooperatives enabled them to have more access to agricultural machinery, which resulted in the efficient use of farm resources. About 64% of the farmers were considered to be practicing a “high” level of mechanization on their rice fields. The members generally had a positive and favorable attitude towards the cooperative and its activities. The mean score on staff professional satisfaction was 2.4 (2= Somewhat satisfied; 3=Satisfied), with a standard deviation of 1.6. There was a statistically significant relationship between members’ professional satisfaction and their attitude towards the cooperative (r=0.645). This is considered as a “substantial association”. A Multivariate Linear Regression indicated that among the independent variables, the farmers’ level of articipation in the cooperative’s activities, their attitude towards the cooperative, and the amount of land owned by farmers could together explain 68.8% of the variability in members’ professional satisfaction. This implied that there are other factors that may have contributed substantially to the variations in farmers’ professional satisfaction that were not investigated in this study