AN ECONOMIC STUDY FOR REFORMING THE COOPERATIVE SECTOR IN FAYOUM GOVERNORATE

Abstract

Local agricultural cooperatives are considered the cornerstone associations onwhich the cooperative sector is relying on. Hence, reforming the cooperative sectorstarts from the local cooperatives as they are the members of the central cooperatives.The total number of local agricultural cooperatives in Fayoum Governorate is is 167representing 52.5% of the total number of firms that sell agricultural productioninputs. They have about 166,000 members, 1,000 board members and 974 extensionagents. They serve about 454,600 feddans with an average holding of 2.75 feddans.each cooperative association has 8 employees; 6 of them are extension agents.According to what have been mentioned above it's obvious how big theagricultural cooperative sector in fayoum is. This makes it very important to highlightthe main problem challenging the sector. A questionnaire has been designed for thatpurpose and collected throughout a number of interviews with that sector leaders inFayoum.69% of interviewees have reported that financing, small holdings,construction on the arable lands and shortage of irrigation water are the mostimportant constraints. As for marketing, structural, managerial and legal problems;45%, 10%, 26% and 5% of the interviewees have reported they exist respectively.As for the suggestions by interviewees; they suggested helping growers tomarket their agricultural crops, offer production inputs, stop construction on thearable lands, finance agricultural activities, improve the extension system, facilitatmachinery services, increase irrigation water supply, going back to apply theagricultural rotation, solving the small holdings problems and make a new survey forall arable lands.Accordingly, the study has set a proposal that fits to work-out most of theseproblems. The proposal has been discussed with the agricultural cooperativeauthorities in Fayoum in order to apply the proposal and evaluate its impacts.