Agricultural Employment Creation in the Northwest Region of Iran, with an Emphasis on Horticultural Sub Sector

According to the necessity of the reduction of peasant's irregular migration, employment creation in rural areas is a vital, especially in areas where is so densely rural populated and suitable for agricultural activities too. The paper's main objective is to study the situation of rural employment creation in northwest region of Iran (including East and West Azerbaijan provinces, Ardabil and Zanjan) and finding solutions to this problem. Therefore, some of the most important economic and demographic characteristics and common feature of agricultural sector of this region were discussed and compared with thenational average. The study is based on Census data of Iranian Statistical Center Yearbooks, Iranian Central Bank and Management and Planning Organization Reports. The data were studied by SPSS & GIS softwares analytically-descriptively. Results show that 31.39 percent of Iranian population lives in rural areas that its average for the northwest region is 37.66 percent. According to the calculated composite index, economically, Iranian northwest agricultural sector is more active than other Iranian regions. Also, in spite of the fact that about 23 percent of value added of this region is obtained fromagricultural sector (that the figure is only 11 percent of the total of Iranian population) as well as 34 percent of this region's population engage in agricultural activities, Iranian agricultural labour productivity especially in northwest provinces is low and there is an obvious latent unemployment phenomenon in this region. According to the findings,we can prepare the good way for productive rural employment creation by transferring surplus agricultural labor from the agronomy sub sector to the horticultural sub sector, the establishment of greenhouse complexes in mid-term, and the development of processing industries pertaining to horticultural in long-term.