Analysis of Comparative Advantage of Industrial Crops

With adoption of Iran as an observer member of world trade organization, production of crops with comparative advantage will be avoidable. This study is an effort to measure the comparative advantage of Golestan province in producing industrial crops including cotton, soybean and rapeseed by using Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) method.Golestan province is one of the important regions in producing mentioned crops. According to results Golestan province has comparative advantage in producing rained cotton and irrigated rapeseed but does not have it in producing irrigated soybean and acts in even-break point in producing rained soybean, rapeseed and irrigated cotton. Also results of sensitivity analysis showed that comparative advantage of Golestan province in producing rained cotton and irrigated soybean is not sustainable, therefore little decline in yield and world prices can remove this advantage from agricultural economics of province. Moreover sensitivity of comparative advantage of irrigated soybean production is low. This means that getting to comparative advantage in this crop production requires remarkable increase in their yield or world prices.