A Research on Reasons for Participation of Producers to Agricultural Fairs

Agricultural fairs, giving a chance to farmers and agricultural suppliers to get together in a certain time and place, allowing direct and efficient information exchange, face-to-face interaction, are significant promotional activities. In Turkey like developing countries, agricultural fairs have a great significance in introduction of new technologies in agriculture. In Turkey, totally 456 fairs were organized in 2015 and 49 of them were related with agriculture and green houses. In this study, individual and enterprise characteristics of the producer visiting the “Field Day” fair held in Tekirda？-Turkey in 2015, benefits and gains provided to producers, producer perspectives on fairs were assessed. The questionnaires made with 173 producers visiting the fair constituted the primary material of the study. Data were analyzed with Non-Linear Canonical Correlation Analysis (DOKKA). It was observed that the producers with high-level education visited more number of fairs and this producer group consider agricultural fairs as an effective tool in introducing agricultural innovations. In general, producers visited agricultural fairs to see new technologies, to gain a prestige and to reach economically available technologies