Developing a decision-making support model to investigate the drivers affecting the optimization of agricultural crop production (The Case of South of Sistan and Baluchestan province)

Stakeholders in the agricultural sector (managers and farm operators) do not understand the products of these interactions due to the wide range of issues related to the "planning", "production" and even "consumer market". Lack of understanding the interactions between social, economic and environmental parameters leads to manifold challenges in the field of cropping production. Price fluctuation is a multifaceted problem attributed by various factors which, when combined, culminate in dangerous consequences for the most farmers .Challenges that have caused crop prices to fluctuate over a period of time, a sharp decline in area under crop, and a long-term decline in farmers' livelihoods. To obviate' this challenge, this study provided a dynamic model for assisting agricultural stakeholders' decisions in the agricultural planning process. The model mentioned in this study, referred to as the "decision-making model", seeks to understand the complexity of the agricultural planning space in the southern region of Sistan and Baluchestan. This model includes a set of dependent factors and drivers in the agricultural plan of the region that aims to understand the feedback of stakeholders' decisions in the agricultural sector and modeling and ultimately simulating their behavior. The DPSIR framework and then VENSIM software were used to evaluate the decision feedback in a decision model. So that first with the help of DPSIR framework the drives affecting on crop program planning of the region are classified and then with the help of VENSIM software modeling and various scenarios are simulated. The results of this study showed that policy makers can provide the conditions for creating good agriculture in the study area by focusing on the components of stress (derived from the DPSIR framework), which are mainly subsistence components. The results of this study in the study area show that many of the components used in crop planning will not lead to improvement or serious damage to the production stability of the study area (onions and tomatoes). In other words, it is possible to help improve and stabilize production in the region by controlling key factors such as reducing the vulnerability of farmers' livelihoods to price fluctuations.