Investigating the Barriers to the Development of Hydroponic Farming in the Development of the Rural Economy (Case Study: Central District of Gorgan County)

Nowadays, one of the appropriate ways for self-sufficiency and food security of our country is the development and deployment of hydroponic greenhouses. This study is in applied form and in terms of method, it is descriptive-analytical. Also using Cochran's formula, 260 employers and hydroponic farm workers as well as villagers were selected as a sample population and questioned and finally analyzed by using descriptive statistics and Friedman test, gamma correlation analysis matrix and factor analysis model in SPSS software environment. The results of the Friedman Test show that the high initial cost of hydroponics and lack of skills of farmers are considered the most serious obstacles. Also, the results of gamma correlation coefficient matrix analysis indicate that costly hydroponics with the inability of cultivation for many crops, lack of skills of farmers’ significant relationship up to 95% confidence level. The results of factor analysis also classified the obstacles to hydroponics in rural areas into four main reasons. Among these, institutional/administrative obstacles with 28.16% of eigenvalue variance are considered as the most important reason and economic and social obstacles, infrastructural barriers, and environmental barriers are in the next positions, respectively. In addition, the studied components are a total of 75.91% of obstacles to hydroponics in rural areas and about 24.9% of the remaining are about factors that were not investigated in this study.