Study of the Effect of Implementing Land Equipping and Renovation Project on productivity in Paddy Fields of Mazandaran Province

Increasing rice production in Iran due to the scarcity of production resources requires increasing productivity. In order to achieve this goal, the land equipping and renovation project has been implemented in the country. Since the most important rice - producing province in Iran is Mazandaran province, the main goal of present study is to analysis the effect of implementing land equipping and renovation project on productivity in paddy fields of Mazandaran province. For this purpose, the required information was collected by filling out a questionnaire from seven cities of Mazandaran province for the crop year 2017-18. The Tornqvist-Theil index was used to calculate the total factor productivity of first cultivation rice. Then, to investigate the factors affecting productivity, linear regression models was estimated using ordinary least squares method. Also, logistic regression model was used to determine factors distinguish between high productivity farmers and low productivity ones in first cultivation rice. The results show that in both linear and logistic models, the variables of land equipping and renovation project, land rent, geographical area (east vs. west of the province), production technology in the form of improved varieties (high yield vs. local) and doing second cultivation, as well as specialization of farmer have had a positive effect on productivity while the scale of production has no effect on productivity. The calculation of the marginal effect based on the Logit model shows that the land equipping and renovation program is one of the most important factors affecting rice productivity so that the implementation of this project have caused to increase probability of achieving a higher than “average productivity of all farmers” up to 28 percent. Based on the results, considering that implementation of land equipping and renovation project has taken many years, it is recommended to pay attention to implement it as soon as possible in other parts of the Mazandarn province.