Sustainable Agriculture Development By Agriculture Incomes sustainability

The concept of sustainable development was defined in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (The Brundtland Commission) for which it «meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.» Sustainability is a concept and cannot be measured directly. Appropriate indicators must be selected to determine levels and duration of sustainability. The objective of this study is to evaluate selected criteria and indicators of agricultural sustainability (with emphasis on economics indicators) at the national level. A sustainable agriculture must sustain the economic viability of the farming operation. The 2007 Iran census indicated approximately 20 million or 31 percent of the population live on rural. This paper presents economics factors of agriculture sustainable development for the years 2003 and 2007. It has used four indicators of agriculture productions insurance, Non-farms income, Profit margin and production productivity (product in surface). The sustainability index suggests that Iran agriculture is only slightly sustainable. On the basis of the indicators analyzed above, the Iran agriculture (economics sustainability) tends towards slightly sustainable: insufficient agriculture productions insurance, low income farms, low stability of the indexes of per capita production and low investment rate of return.