Analysis of Productivity of Water Wheat Production Sources in Provinces of Iran Using Multivariate Techniques

Sustainable development of agricultural sector requires appropriate strategies based on the realities. Defining, measuring and analyzing the productivity indices of the strategic wheat product will help to understand the real differences in productivity in the provinces and make the suitable decisions for their economic development. In this paper, the partial productivity indices for measuring the productive efficiency of the sources of wheat production such as water, manpower, resources used in the land preparation stages, planting, and harvesting and total productivity of the production factors are defined. The annual productivity indices are measured for different provinces of Iran between 2006 and 2011. The multiplicity of productivity indicators for different provinces makes it difficult to analyze them. To reduce the number of indicators, the exploratory factor analysis approach is used and a productivity number is calculated for each province. Finally, the clustering approach is used for classifying the provinces based on their similarities in productivity. The results showed that Ardebil and Kermanshah provinces are similar based on partial manpower productivity index and total productivity factor. Mazandaran, Ilam and Hormozgan provinces have the highest water productivity.