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IntroductionThe transfer of sustainability training means applying the skills, attitudes, and knowledge acquired from training to the workplace to help sustainability and environmental protection. This study aimed to conduct a behavioral analysis of sustainability training transfer among farmers that had attended extension-training courses on the Land and Conservation Agriculture Project (LCAP) in Iran.MethodsThis research is quantitative and applied research that was carried out via a standardized survey. The research population was composed of all farmers who attended LCAP extension training courses in the three provinces of Golestan, Fars, and Khouzestanin, Iran (N=1204). 291 farmers were selected through stratified random sampling. A panel of experts established the content and face validity of the questionnaire. A pilot study was conducted to check the reliability by calculating Cronbach's alpha.Results and discussionFindings indicated that most farmers had sustainability training transfer at a high level. The analysis with a structural equation model revealed that perceived content validity, transfer design, opportunity to use, supervisor support, trainer characteristics, peer support, motivation to transfer, transfer effort -performance expectations, performance coaching, and personal capacity for transfer influenced farmers' intention to transfer sustainability training significantly and positively. Furthermore, farmers' intentions had a significant effect on their transfer of sustainability training. It can be concluded that a sustainability training transfer system is applicable to a training context related to sustainable agriculture and can provide a useful instrument for agricultural education organizations when investing in farmers' training.

The current study was carried out with the purpose of discriminant analysis of participated farmers’ characteristics in CA project based on learning transfer system in Iran. The study was a quantitative research that was conducted by a survey technique. The study population was consisted of all farmers who participated in extension training programs of CA in three provinces (Golestan, Fars and Khouzestan) of Iran (N = 1204). The sample study was selected by Krejcie and Morgan’s sampling table through stratified random sampling method (n = 384). Data were collected through a questionnaire. Discriminant analysis was used to investigate farmers’ characteristics among three levels of weak, moderate and strong learning transfer. The findings illustrated that nine variables of learning transfer system (personal capacity for transfer, supervisor support, opportunity to use, positive personal outcomes, performance coaching, motivation to transfer, perceived content validity, transfer design and transfer effort–performance expectations) had significant effects on the level of farmers’ learning transfer. It can be concluded that the learning transfer system is an applicable tool to investigate farmers’ learning transfer in the agriculture sector. Accordingly, it recommends that follow-up plans must be designed to achieve both the CA aims and optimization of farmers’ learning transfer.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is a tool of sustainable agriculture utilized in many countries. Sustainable agriculture has different dimensions among which the most important ones are environmental, social, economic, and institutional. Educational and extension programs of CA are in accordance with the principles of sustainable agriculture. Accordingly, educational and extension contents prepared for farmers should include the four dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, economic, and institutional). The main objective of the present study was to examine the sustainability dimensions in the contents of CA training programs using an in-depth content analysis technique. Educational contents considered here included brochures, extension publications, regulations, and training slides. Based on the literature, themes and sub-themes for each of the four sustainability dimensions were extracted. Then, the frequency of each sub-theme in the CA training contents was counted. The findings showed differing emphasis on the sub-themes of sustainability dimensions in the contents of CA training programs so that the environmental and social dimensions had the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. As the main principles of CA, no tillage/low tillage, crop rotation, and maintenance of crop residues constituted the sub-themes of the environmental dimension, and the emphasis was placed on this dimension reasonably and expectedly.

Environmental attitude is a crucial component in environmental psychology. It is a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating the natural environment with some degree of favor or disfavor. The main aim of this study was to determine the environmental attitude levels of the employees of the agricultural knowledge-based companies based on sociocultural variables by binomial logistic regression in an inferential design. The research population was composed of the employees of the agricultural knowledge-based companies (N = 175). In this study, a census method was used. The research instrument was a self-designed questionnaire which composed of three sections. The first section was related to employees’ demographic and sociocultural characteristics. The second and third sections were to measure employees’ environmental knowledge and attitude. NEP scale was used to measure environmental attitude. The SPSS20 and R software packages were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that governmental policies, mass media, membership in the NGOs, educational level and training have significant effect on employees’ attitudes to the environment protection. Therefore, it is concluded that environmental attitude of agricultural knowledge-based companies’ employees is influenced by a set of factors. These factors alone cannot change employees’ attitude toward sustainability and environment. Accordingly, necessary and appropriate conditions should be provided to change the environmental attitude of agricultural knowledge-based companies’ employees. These conditions will be provided by government policies, types of mass media, various training and employee participation in NGOs.