ardabil

In order to increase the production of agricultural products, factor productivity growth and increasing the efficiency of farms is necessary. The security of resources, including water and land, has forced farmers to use desirable inputs along with undesirable inputs, which in some cases has caused a negative impact on natural resources and therefore environmental efficiency. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the effective factors on the environmental efficiency of potato production in Ardabil County.  In order to achieve the objective of study, the stochastic frontier translog production function has been estimated and measure the environmental efficiency and the factors affecting it. For this purpose, the data collected from 160 potato farmers of Ardabil County by completing a questionnaire.  The results showed that the mean of environmental efficiency of farmers was 67.87%. Therefore, producers can decrease the use of undesirable inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) about 32% by using other inputs values constant. Based on the results, the factors of age, education, main job and the amount of cultivated area showed a positive effect on environmental efficiency. The values of elasticity calculated for the variables of labore, seed, land, chemical fertilizers and pesticides showed that the greatest quantity of elasticity was for labore equal 0.690 and the lowest for the pesticide equal 0.064. Thus the production is faced with increasing returns of scale.  Considering the condition of potato production and the amount of environmental efficiency, there is a suitable ground for reducing the use of undesirable inputs such as fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Due to this issue, while reducing production costs, a health product will be product. Considering the positive effect of education and the amount of cultivation and the negative effect of the number of plots, more communication with farmers with higher education and integrated farms can strengthen the economies of scale of potato production and make it more economical.

Rural-urban migration has been identified as one of the most important components of livelihood strategy and poverty reduction in many rural communities. The aim of this study was to conduct a factor analysis of indicators determining rural-urban migration among ranchers in Ardabil province's watersheds. The research method was descriptive-analytical and the data collection tools were questionnaire, observation, and face-to-face interview. The statistical population included 9244 ranchers in 5 watersheds (33 villages) in Ardabil province, with a sample size of 372 persons based on Cochran's calculation. The questionnaire included 11 economic indicators, 10 social indicators and 6 indicators related to other factors affecting rural-urban migration. The Friedman test was utilized to rank the most important factors affecting in rural-urban migration of ranchers. The factor analysis test was used to analyze the variables impacting migration and the KMO index and the Bartlett test were utilized to assess the adequacy of the data. The results of the principal components analysis (PCA) revealed that among the studied indicators based on factor loading, 9 factors of economic-cultural security, welfare services, reverse migration, lack of motivation in rural areas, social participation, land, children's future, poor employment in rural and higher job chances in the city, respectively, explained a total of 85 percent of the variance of the data. In general, the findings of the present study can explain the essential priorities for reducing the livelihood and social problems of rural communities in the study region, as well as providing key organizations with the necessary information for efficient planning. This might ultimately reduce rural-urban migration.

Unbalanced application of chemical inputs leads to environmental damage, which reduces the quality and health of the soil (Samavat, 2011) Vermicompost is one of the bio-fertilizers that results from a semiaerobic process by a specific species of earthworm called Fetida Eisenia and excretion of these substances from the body of the worm (Sekar and Karmegam, 2010). Compost tea, a vermicompost extract, has the beneficial properties of the vermicompost from which it is prepared. During extraction, dissolved inorganic nutrients, humic acid, fulvic acid, hormones and growth regulators are fed into the extract from Vermicompost (Afshar Manesh et al., 2016). This research was conducted with the aimof producing an organic crop and reducing the use of chemical fertilizers, as well as determining the best concentration of compost tea on the growth and yield of three cultivars of strawberry. This experiment was carried out in a factorial based on a completely randomized block design with three replications and two factors: A - concentration of compost tea at four levels (0, 1500, 3000 and 4500 ppm); B - three short-term cultivars of strawberry (Parous, Queen Eliza and Diamante) in the research sites of the University of Mohaghegh Ardabili in 2015-17. The compost tea solution was prepared in a ration 1:5. The extract was diluted with water to prepare each level of solution. The spraying of compost tea from the third stage of the strawberry bush (mid-April to late May) was carried out in five periods of 10 days apart from each other in each year. Two weeks after the last application of treatments (June of the second year), growth variables of the plant were measured, such as fresh and dry weight of leaves, leaf area, number of runners, fresh and dry weight of root, root length, chlorophyll a, b, and total chlorophyll, rate of flowers converting into fruits and fruit yield. Analysis of variance indicated that the effective compost tea has had a significant effect at 1% probability level on all traits. Comparison of meanings showed that the highest fresh weight (26.84 gr), dry weight of leaves (7.38 gr) and fresh weight of root (23.10 gr) were related to 4,500 ppm treatments. In all three indicators, the Parous (27.86 gr, 8.71 gr and 22.89 gr) responded better than the Diamante and Queen Eliza cultivars. The highest rate of flowers converted into fruit (93.55%), fruit yield in bush (181.73 gr), dry weight of root (8.79 gr) and root length (18.48 cm) resulted from the 3000 ppm application. The Parous also had the highest rate of flowers converted into fruit (93.60%), fruit yield in bush (162.02 gr), dry weight of root (8.74 gr) and root length (18.12 cm). Due to the interaction of treatments, the Parous with the 3000 ppm concentration of compost tea had the highest amount of leaf area (7533.75 cm2), chlorophyll a (1.65 mg.g-1FW), chlorophyll b (0.79 mg.g- 1FW) and total chlorophyll (2.44 mg.g-1FW). The highest number of runners (8.89) was observed in the treatment of Parous cultivar with 4500 ppm level of compost tea. It can generally be concluded that the application of compost tea as a foliar application on various cultivars of strawberry can improve plant growth and yield. According to the results of this experiment, the level of 3000 ppm of compost tea and Parous cultivar had the highest growth indices and yield of strawberry.