A Survey on the Level of Agricultural Development and its Effective Indicators in Hirmand

From geopolitic point of view, the underdevelopment of the border regions which creates basic challenges for country has a large amount of effects on the developing process of the country. Solving the problems of the border regions specially providing stable security in these regions is not merely a security and military issue but it is political, economical, social and cultural in nature. In this regard, the strategy for organizing and developing the rural areas in these regions becomes highly important. In fact, agriculture and its various activities have a special role in different economical, social and environmental dimensions of rural areas (Whelan, 2003:7). Lack of attention for assessing the magnitude of their effect decreases the agricultural potentials of the rural areas and if this process continues, the agricultural sector and therefore the social and economical stability of the rural areas will be destroyed. The scope of the activities in the agricultural sector in the country's rural areas in one side and the occupational and income dependence of villagers on this sector on the other side, requires the planners to pay more attention to this issue because the national development and the real economical independence of every region is contingent upon the agricultural sector.Many studies have been done by researchers about the factors affecting on the growth and the development of agriculture and each of these studies have pointed to particular causes and factors such as adverse geographical conditions like water shortage, lack of fertile lands and hot weather (Meijerink, 2007:47); focusing on all of the production factors and promoting productivity (Nin–pratt et al., 2009:101); technological development and local production, tax cuts, government investments on researches and infrastructures and the mechanization of agricultural sector(Chen et al., 2008: 581). Some researchers state that the public infrastructures have an important role in the development of agricultural sector (Mamtzakis, 2003:169), and some believes that the productivity of labor force in promoting the agriculture level (Baylis, 2008:75), and the integration of farmlands in order to increase utilizing mechanization and the deep development of agriculture by increasing the function and the intensity of cultivation are considered to be among the most important strategies for agricultural development by other researchers (melor,Gavi,1999:25).Others cite that the essential training for effective access to modern technologies and the farmer's awareness about the market conditions and their literacy level are the major factors in agricultural development and these researchers believe that those strategies which do not focus on human force are not successful (Stiglitz, 2000:552). Some researchers approve that the close relationship and interaction between researchers, county agents, farmers and policy-makers is of high importance in agricultural development (colemon, 2000:311). Physical infrastructures and technologies for achieving high rate of agricultural growth are considered to be essential by some other researchers (Ravallion & Datt, 2002: 383).On this basis and with respect to the performed studies and the spatial differences and various environmental factors and also for achieving a unit development pattern in each region and a comprehensive knowledge of effective and exclsive factors, in this research it is tried to study a special area (Hirmand township), in this regard, the current study seeks answers for the following questions:Do the effective factors in agricultural sector of this region have different impacts?What effective factors should be prioritized for promoting the agricultural level of this region?To answer the above questions, the following hypothesis can be presented:The various and effective factors on the agricultural sector of the region are of different level of importance.Among the different effective dimensions, production dimension and its indices affect mostly on the development of agriculture.