فصلنامه اقتصاد کشاورزی و توسعه
پیاپی 100 (زمستان 1396)

In this research, the average value of marginal production of water in the Tabas County was estimated in 2013-2014 using econometric estimates of agricultural production functions. Data were collected through a questionnaire and random sampling from 100 wheat producers. Five shapes of production functions including Cobb Douglas, Translog Transcendental, Leontief and generalized second degree were estimated using research data. The average production elasticity and marginal production were calculated to be 0.56 and 0.28, respectively. The results indicate that wheat growers are rational producers. The average economic value of water is estimated at 2930 rials per cubic meter, which increases as the size of the farm increase; while wheat cultivators were paying 890 Rials per cubic meter of water in the irrigation network of Tabas in the 2013-2014 crop years. It seems that the difference in the value of marginal production of water with the price paid by farmers, as an important factor, has led to the disappearance of the incentive for farmers to raise funds for increasing irrigation efficiency and the use of new irrigation technologies. An appropriate increase in water supply prices along with implementation of land consolidation has been one of the main suggestions of this study.

The production of poultry and eggs are depended to many factors. Soybean meal is the main input for poultry industry. Participate in the futures market or operate a futures market, in Iran, as hedging instruments, creates ensuring from expected revenues and decrease volatility of inputs and products price in manufacturing plants. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to calculate the hedging rate with using two models: “Minimum-variance” and “Mean-variance”. The results show that with the purchase of 121% of the soybean meal from futures markets 61% of the input price risk is reduced. According to the results, the hedging ratio increases with entering the exchange rate to model, but without increase of hedging instruments, the efficiency of hedging ratio decreases.

Weak governance of groundwater and over-extraction of water by farmers had serious economic, social and environmental impacts. Fars province in production of crops is mainly dependent on groundwater and is facing with this problem. This paper aims to examine some economic, social and environmental effects of groundwater depletion in Darab plain. Data were collected from interview with a stratified random sample of 300 farmers. In addition, to measure the effects of groundwater depletion on water quality, a sample of extracted water was analyzed. The findings of the study showed that the income of 91 percent of farmers have decreased as a result of water depletion. Evaluation of social effect of groundwater depletion show that this problem led to increase the poverty, unemployment and migration.

Virtual water trade as a new approach to global water resources, has attracted global attention and allocation of 90 percent of the agricultural sector to this trade has revealed special attention to it. The present study with the aim of optimizing the trade of virtual water in 23 cities located in the Isfahan province was done in 2014. For this purpose a multi-criteria regional cropping pattern with the ability to transfer crops was designed and implemented. The results of this study showed that Isfahan province has 118.7 million cubic meters net exports of virtual water in the current cropping pattern and implementation of the multi-criteria model led to 17.8 million cubic meters net import of virtual water. Therefore, improvement of net import of virtual water was 136.5 million cubic meters that it shows the stored virtual water during the optimization process of exchanges. Renewable water per capita index (Falkenmark) with an average of 119 cubic meters per year improved by multi-criteria. The results can help to decision-making managers in the optimization field of virtual water trade. From this point of view can be cited determination of regional net virtual water trade in order to deal with inappropriate temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation in Isfahan province by transport of agricultural products.

Bank Keshavarzi (BK) is considered as the major financial entity in financing agricultural sector. Due to limitations in accessible resources, objective of this study is prioritizing and optimal allocating of agricultural credits in Iran. For this purpose, the relevant indices of investment priorities are defined and calculated. Then, by utilizing Entropy technique, the weights of mentioned indices are determined and by the use of Topsis method, the agricultural subsectors prioritized in provinces separately. Eventually, the goal programming is used for the optimum allocation of credits. The results showed that in most provinces, investment priorities are as follows, respectively: farming and horticulture, livestock and poultry, fisheries and forestry. In general, according to the goal programming results, the credit disbursement in BK is not optimal; by assuming the optimality, about 56.9 percent of such credits will be allocated to farming and horticulture, 39.1 percent for livestock and poultry, 2.7 percent and 1.3 percent for fisheries and forestry sub sectors, respectively.

With the establishment and expansion of agricultural processing industries; it is possible to minimize agricultural wastes as well as creating employment for villagers to improve the income of the villagers in the region and prevent their migration to other cities. Accordingly, the present study aims to review processing industries in Guilan province and determining the priority of creating these industries. For this purpose, after reviewing the current conditions of rural processing industries in this province and their raw materials (agricultural products), and using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and using nine indicators (including employment, value added, productivity, capital formation, waste reduction, increased exports, reduced imports, environmental protection and availability of raw materials in the province); we tried to prioritize processing industries in agricultural sector of Guilan province. This prioritization is conducted in general into four main categories of such industries (garden products, agricultural products, livestock and fisheries) and also in partly subgroups of each of the four main groups using the comments and suggestions of the 10 most experienced experts in the province that were in the acceptable range of the AHP method. The results of the research showed that priorities of the processing industries in this province are as follows in contrary to existing conditions: garden products, fisheries, livestock and agricultural products. The three priorities of the garden products sector are fruit processing, tea production and packaging, cold storage, and for fisheries sector, the priorities are producing canned fish, fish products and producing powder of fish and/or other aquatic animals. In the livestock sector, the priorities are production of dairy products, slaughterhouses and production of meat products and ready-to-cook foods. And finally, in farming sector the priorities are rice field and packing, preparing feed for livestock and poultry and oiling from agricultural crops. Increased investment in the processing industries of garden products, fisheries and livestock; respectively; can help in achieving the goal of reducing wastes and increasing employment and rural incomes.

In the second half of 2010, the severe fluctuation of food prices has increased the number of poor people in the world. Therefore, the food prices have become important matter for many developing countries over the past decade. This study investigates how food commodities global prices are passed on to domestic prices in Iran. For this purpose, the Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive (MS-VAR) method and regime dependent impulse response functions and quarterly data for rice, wheat, sugar and vegetable oils were used. The results show that the MS-VAR model provides a suitable framework for modeling the price pass-through of these products. According to the findings, there is a considerable difference in the pass-through magnitude between the regimes. The pass-through extent in second regime is much higher than first regime for all products. In other words, the substantial change in the price pass-through mechanism has occurred with global food price crisis. Therefore, it is suggested that the relevant policies such as import tariffs and restrictions implement with respect to world prices and domestic prices reaction.