Assessing Agricultural Sustainability in Iran by Relative Advantage Approach

Sustainability of agriculture involves agriculture resources, environment, social-economic and rural social issues. Sustainability is a qualitative concept and don’t measured directly, so should be selected appropriate indexes which it could be evaluated the value of sustainability in agricultural systems. To evaluate the sustainability of agriculture in different counties of Iran, the relative advantage method was used. For this purpose, 5 indexes which included some indicators were studied for every county. These indexes were agriculture resources, agriculture development, environment, rural societies and education. In general, 60 indicators were considered to evaluate the sustainability of agriculture. Different counties were ranked for every indicator and value of sustainability was calculated for every index and finally the sustainability of agriculture was determinate for every province. The results showed that first rank under indexes of agriculture development and environment, agriculture resources and education indexes and rural society's index were related to Fars, Khorasan Razavi and Mazandaran provinces, respectively. Under all of studied indexes, Ghom province had lowest rank compared with others. Based on all of 5 indexes, the highest agriculture sustainability was obtained in Fars and Khorasan Razavi province and the lowest was gained in Ghom province. After Ghom, provinces of Kohgiliue va Boir Ahmad, Boshehr, Ilam and Semnan had lowest sustainability of agriculture. In general, agriculture sustainability and advantage or disadvantage was determinate for every province.