A Survey on the Performance of Agricultural Co-operative Societies and Presentation of Practical Approaches (A Case study: Agricultural Co-operative Societies in Khorasan Province)

  In the present research, has been studied the performance of agricultural co-operative societies in Khorasan Province. The main purposes of this study were as follows: 1-Determination of the performance level of agricultural co-operatives in organizing the dispersed human resources in agriculture sector.   2- Determination of the performance level of agricultural co-operatives in meeting members, needs.   This is an applied descriptive survey. To collect data, researcher-made questionnaire was used and the related documents were reviewed. The validity of questionnaires was tested by Cronbach' alpha and spss software. cronbach' alpha coefficient for 20 questions of questionnaire related to organizing disperse human resource in agriculture sector was 88 percent and for 56 questions of questionnaire related to meeting members' needs was 81 percent which both results showed high validity. Statistical sample size was determined by two level cluster-ransom sampling method. In the first step three cities (Bojnord-Ferdows-Mashhad) from the total 22 cities in Khorasan Province were selected. At the second level from the total of 48 agricultural co-operatives with the total number of 36, 195 members in these three cities through simple random method, 15 agricultural co-operatives and their 300 members were selected (From each city 100 members) participated in the study. To test the hypotheses, T-student Test was used. The Hypotheses in this research were not verified. According to the results, the performance level of agricultural co-operative societies in both approaches were evaluated higher than medium level and lower than successful level. The main factors which affect low performance are: The shortage of capital, credit and lack of participation by members in activities.