Prioritizing the Factors Affecting the Wheat Losses from the Perspective of Wheat Farmers of Mahabad city

Abstract

The controversial issue of increasing food waste is one of the serious challenges in most of countries especially in developing countries in a way that the politicians and scholars of scientific communities in the Third World have sought to reduce the loss of crops during planting and harvesting and distribution and using stages. The purpose of this study was to analyze and identify the effective mechanisms to reduce the wheat losses in the city of Mahabad. The study in terms of objective was an applied one and in terms of method was casual and communicative. A questionnaire was used to collect data. Face and content validity of the questionnaire were obtained by asking experts’ ideas and making any necessary amendments. To explain the reliability of questionnaire, pre-test operations were done outside of the main population on 30 wheat farmers. Cronbach alpha coefficient of questionnaire was obtained 83%. The statistical population of this study consisted of all wheat farmers of Mahabad city with a population equivalent to N= 6200 that by using stratified sampling, simple random and the general formula of Cochran 210 subjects were selected. In this study, effective factors in reducing the wheat losses were studied in 7 areas. The results of this study showed a significant difference between the factors affecting wheat losses.