The Study of Challenges of Rice Value Chain in Mazandaran Province from the View Point of Farmers (Case Study: Darkola and PanbeChole Village)

Focusing the value chain of products is one of the most important new approaches in agricultural development. Nevertheless, very a few researches related to the rice value chain across the country have been done , especially in the Mazandaran province, where it is considered as the most important producer of rice. Therefore, the main goal of this research was to the study of challenges of rice value chain from the view point of farmers. This is an applied research which needed data collected through systematic literature review and survey method. In qualitative part of research, inductive analysis method applied as a guide for data collection and analysis.  The target population consisted of active paddy farmers which 15 out of them purposefully selected as a sample. For data collection, field observations and in-depth interviews used in the framework of the focus group. The validity of the findings was also confirmed by the triangulation process. The research finding indicated that the region's rice value chain face many challenges in the pre-production, production and post-production process.