The research aimed to identify the improved marketing practices applied by rural women for the vegetable crops they grow, identify the obstacles that limit the application of these marketing practices. In additionto identifying the needs of respondent from agricultural guidance to improve their imperfect marketing practices regarding the vegetable crops they grow.
The research was conducted in the two centers ofTala, Menoufia Governorate, and Tanta, Gharbia Governorate, as they are one of the largest centers in the two governorates in terms of vegetable cultivation, by the same criterion, two villages in each center were randomly selected. The research sample size wasdetermined by 10% of the total number ofvegetable farmers' wives (2190), and the sample size was with 219 respondents. The date was collected after conducting the initial test (pre-test) of a personal interview questionnaire during in February 2022, data was processed quantitatively using frequencies and percentages.
The most important results are summarized as follows:
• Some of the improved practices occupied advanced rank, where they werementioned by high percentages of the respondents, foremost of which was the good treatment of the respondents with customers, the cultivation of varieties of vegetables according to consumer demands, discarding the corrupted products from thevegetable crops before marketing, and packing paper crops to facilitate their trading in the market by the following percentages respectively ( 95.9% ), ( 84.5% ), ( 84% ) and( 83%).
• There were also improved marketing practices applied by low percentages of respondents, foremost of which was providing some services to buyers, doing marketing to non-traditional parties, and shading the places of sale to keep vegetable products fresh, by the following percentages respectively ( 11%), ( 16.4%), ( 20.5%).
• IT was also found that there is an improved marketing practice that not all respondents use, which is the use of the internet to market some vegetable products.
• The results revealed that the most important obstacles facing the discussions with regard to the application of improved marketing practices were the following: Lack of guidance on improved marketing practices, weak attention of guidance to solving marketing problems for rural women, lack of available information on markets, especially for prices and items, and weak material resources of the discussions.
• The most important guidance needs were as follows: Providing information on packaging, types of packaging and sources of obtaining them, making simplified and illustrated brochures of some improved practices, and providing marketing guidance from development engineers for the research.