Welfare Effects of Sustainable Self-Sufficiency on Iran's Wheat Market

Sustainable food security has always been one of the main concerns of policy makers and wheat, as the most widely used product in Iran, has been contributing to food security. Also, achieving self-sufficiency and applying supportive policies has always been on the agenda, but this has only happened in the short run. Hence the development of strategies to achieve sustainable long-term self-sufficiency of this product is essential. The objective of this study was to evaluate the welfare impacts of sustainable self-sufficiency in a ten-year horizon (2014-2024), therefore, in this study, partial equilibrium approach and multi-market models have been used. In this model, domestic supply, demand, imports and inventories functions have been used, and the area under each curve is defined as surplus welfare. The results showed that the move to self-sufficiency, although in the early years leads to welfare losses, but then the welfare losses have been offset, and wheat market will converge towards a stable condition. Therefore, it is suggested that achieving the self-sufficiency is based on a long-term plan and increasing the guaranteed price should maintain the incentive of wheat production.