فصلنامه اقتصاد کشاورزی
سال دوازدهم شماره 4 (زمستان 1397)

Improving and reforming of infrastructures is a stability strategy that can be achieved by improving the quality of life, supplying goods and services, and providing welfare facilities and plays an important role in increasing the standard of living, rural development and growth. Therefore, in the present study, the infrastructure index was calculated using criteria such as transportation, energy, information technology and services with hierarchical and topsis combination model. The Human Development Index was considered as a proxy of rural development. Also, with the panel data model, the impact of infrastructure of villages in 28 provinces of the country on rural development was investigated in the period of 1394-1379. The random effects model results of panel data indicate a positive relationship between rural development with infrastructure and construction investment variables. Because of weakness, the agricultural sector has failed to move along with rural development, therefore, the growth of agricultural sector with rural development is not significant. Hierarchical method results showed that among 19 sub-criteria of infrastructure, rural roads have a higher priority in rural development. Therefore, planning is recommended with regard to fixed construction budget. So that economic, social and political conditions do not affect planning implementation. In this case, the upgrading of infrastructure will have a greater impact on rural development in the country.

Downward trend of environmental situation of Lake Urmia has led to the formation of multiple organizations and working groups aimed at restoring Lake Urmia. Success of the restoration solutions, to great extent, depends on the acceptance of them by the stakeholders and level of their contribution. Therefore, contingent ranking approach has been utilized in this study to explore the heterogenous preferences of basin residents. The acquired information was collected by 382 questionnaires completed directly by citizens of 13 districts in 2015 and scale-adjusted multilevel latent class model was used for analysing data in the full ranking format. The results identified four lower-level classes, two grand glasses and two scale classes which confirmed that socioeconomic characteristics, geophysical characteristics and also, existence of uncertainty in the responses, are three impressive factor in modelling preferences. Estimating willingness to pays diagnosed climate regulation and prevention from salt storms as the most important attribute for the respondents. Calculating compensating variation indicated that in the case of full restoration of Lake Urmia, over 222 million Rials to 5 billion Rials annually will be added to households welfare. Consolidation of dust and sand drifts and plants adapted to local conditions, are highly recommended.

Insurance as a mean of risk management in agricultural sector is an important factor covering the variance of farm income. Regarding the yields and price variance of potato in East Azerbaijan province during the period of 1985-2015, in this study, we measured the income insurance premium of potato producers. Also, future values of price and yield were predicted using Halt-Winters exponential smoothing method. Then, the predicted and guaranteed income were calculated using the predicted price and yields within the coverage of 0.6, 0.75, 0.80, 0.85, 0.90 and 0.95. After detrending, lognormal and beta distributions were used for the distributions of price and yields, respectively. We also used Chvlsky analysis to calculate the common distributions of price and yield. Finally, using these distributions and Monte Carlo Simulation, we measured the of potato income insurance premium as 957269 Rials within the coverage rate of 0.60. Potato yields insurance premium was about 2040000 Rials in 2015-2016, the negative correlation coefficient between price and yields has been made income insurance premium is less than yield insurance premium, thus this crop holds better qualifications for expanding income insurance. Therefore, it is recommended to policy makers to develop income insurance as an appropriate practical solution to prevent variance in price and yields of the product by establishing training courses in agricultural products insurance (income insurance in particular), and hence reduce the income risk of farmers.

The appearance of water scarcity problems in current decades at most pf countries leads to take new policies regarding water demand management instead of water demand supply. Therefore, the current study attempted to investigate the effects of irrigation water quota on cultivation pattern and gross margin in Qorveh–Dehgolan aquifer. The positive mathematical programming (PMP) and production function with constant elasticity of substitution (CES) was used to analyze data. The necessary data was collected through a stratified random sampling and fill questionnaires for the agricultural year 2015-16. The results showed that, applying the policy of irrigation water quota (under scenarios of 10 to 40 per cent respect to base year) would lead to reduce the level of cropland of products with high water requirement such as alfa-alfa and potato crops and it would lead to increase the level of cropland of products with lower water requirement such as wheat and barley crops and thus reducing the level of cropland as a whole. And again the results showed that, application of the policy cause of increase of water productivity but decrease of gross revenue.

The significant importance of wheat consumption in the Iranian food supply basket has caused the country to supply wheat with various challenges, including reducing water resources, increasing government spending and exchange rate turbulence. Accordingly, in this study, by designing a partial dynamic equilibrium model, it was attempted to answer the key question that needs to be addressed in order to cope with the challenges of supplying wheat in the coming years. Therefore, the rice and quantity components of the wheat market of the country were simulated in the approaches of supportive price and free price for the 1404 horizons. The results showed that in the horizon of 1404, reduction of wheat yield and wheat production would be expected. Nevertheless, providing farmer's annual price expectations based on inflation in a supportive approach will lead to more sustainability of production and supply of the product. On the other hand, the liberalization of wheat prices and, consequently, reduced demand for this product will bring more sustainability of the country's wheat stock. Therefore, in this study, it was suggested that in order to cope with the challenges of supplying wheat in the country, in particular the reduction of the share of government support, various policies to increase the entry of private sectors into the chain of purchase and sale of wheat be on the agenda. It was also suggested that the policy of minimizing imports of wheat by new methods, including over-land planting, would replace the import replacement policy of this product.

Nowadays, the use of agricultural machines and implements is necessary for development. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the appropriate level of mechanization in different activities of agriculture in order to achieve production, employment, income distribution and environment goals. On the other hand, one of the main concerns in the agricultural sector is the issue of employment in this sector and its degree of influence on changing economic factors, has a special place. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction of mechanization and employment in agricultural sector of Khorasan Razavi province. For this purpose, the model of the system of simultaneous equations of the panel data is used for 19 cities of Khorasan Razavi province during the years of 2012-16. The results of the research show that employment and mechanization have mutual, negative and significant effects on each other, although the mechanization has far more influence on employment. Also, production, mechanized service units and gross income have a positive and significant effect on agricultural mechanization. On the other hand, the cost of inputs (including seeds, pesticides and chemical and animal fertilizers) and the wages have a negative and significant effect on employment and crop area has a positive and significant effect on it. It is recommended to improve the mechanization situation by establishing and developing agricultural machinery services companies. Also we can increase the employment by employing specialist labor in these companies. Moreover, with supportive payments to reduce production costs and increase gross income, farmers can be persuaded to stay in the countryside, which will increase agricultural employment.

The present study conducted to specify agricultural activities having prioriety in achieving employment growth rate targeted in the sixth National Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plan in Iran. To this end, a regional mathematical programing model for agricultural sector is integrated with a mixed model of social accouting matrix to connect national employment objective to the regional agricultural production inputs constraint. Using such an integrated model, it is poosible to specify what activities and in what provinces have the prioriety to be expanded and are more helpful in achieving national employment objective. Results indicate that to reach 3.9 percent employment growth rate specified in the sixth national plan, a growth rate of 4.4 percent in agricultural sector is required. The growth rate in farming, horticulture, livestock, and fisheries subsectors are 4.8, 2.3, 6.8, and 4.3 percent, respectively. Results also reveal that wheat with 8.3 percent and rice with 0.1 percent have the highest and lowest priority, respectively, for expansion in the crops sub-sector. In this sub-sector, Khuzestan, Ardebil and Fars provinces have the highest priority for this crop.to be considered. In the horticultural sub-sector, plum product has the highest proriety to be expanded by a growth rates of 3.5% and tea product has the lowest peroriety to be expanded with a growth rate of 0.3 percent. In this sub-sector, the provinces of Fars, Mazandaran and East and West Azarbaijan have the highest priority to be considered for development of horticultural activities. Regarding livestock, poultry and aquaculture products, results show that a more peroriety must be given to the beef production relative to the carp production. Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Gilan, Chaharmahal Bakhtiari and Lorestan are the provinces with the highest priority in the development of aquaculture activities. However, the development of livestock and poultry activities does not differ significantly between provinces of the country.