Agricultural mechanization in Iran

Despite the importance of machinery in agriculture, (Iranian) government policies have not led to appropriate supply of machineries toward agricultural sector in recent years. Machinery canalization to this sector not only has not provided the mechanization of agricultural sector but also it has not been able to compensate depreciation of machineries during recent years. Therefore, this condition has caused the reduction of mechanization level and has decreased the mechanization multiplier and also forced farmers to use obsolete machines. In this paper, the agricultural mechanization in Iran has been reviewed by using last 15-year data on agricultural machinery and mechanization and interviewing the experts. The research results show that machinery procurement, in terms of number and type, during 1st, 2nd and 3rd economic development plans has not been in accordance with plan forecasts. Agricultural machinery's price has increased more than guaranteed prices of agricultural products and also loan ratios to machinery prices have been decreasing repeatedly. In spite of what is mentioned above, agricultural mechanization has been improved, showing current mechanization role in agriculture sector. Finally, this paper discusses bottlenecks of agricultural mechanization in Iran.