Determining the Priority of Development of Agricultural Processing Industries in Guilan Province

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.