The Current and Future Role of Agricultural Extension Centers in Providing Extension Services to Farmers in the New Valley Governorate "الدور الحالي والمستقبلي للمراکز الإرشادية الزراعية في تقديم الخدمات الإرشادية للزراع بمحافظة الوادي الجديد"

The research aimed to identify the current and future role of agricultural extension centers in providing services to farmers from their viewpoint in the following areas: Agricultural production, animal production, irrigation water rationalization, environmental preservation, small industries, women's development, community awareness, health and population, the problems that the extension centers encounter in providing related services to the farmers from their perspective. The research was carried out in El Kharga and El Dakhla Centers, the New Valley Governorate. A randomized, systemic sample of 216 respondents represented 5% of the total sample of 4324 farmers who hold agricultural lands in the selected villages. Field data were collected by personal interview in a questionnaire form, and several statistical methods were used in data analysis, starting with tabular presentation i.e. the Replicates, the Percentages, Arithmetic mean, Standard deviation, and the average degree. The most important results showed that 78.6% of the total respondents fall into the categories of current low and medium role of agricultural extension centers in providing services to farmers in the research area, with an overall average score of 1.22 degrees and 84.7% of the total respondents fall into the categories of the medium and high future role of agricultural extension centers in providing services to them, with an average score of 2.41 degree. The problems extension centers mostly face with serving the farmers are an insufficient number of engineers working in the center by 100%, and a shortage of specialists in some areas of agricultural production of 97.7%.