Need Assessment to Sustainable Agricultural Development Policies: A Case Study of Practitioners in Hamedan Province of Iran

This study aims at analyzing the need to sustainable agricultural development policies as well as extracting and presenting the priorities of these policies in Hamedan province of Iran. The statistical society includes all the academic scholars, researchers and experts of headquarter departments, those who work in the organizations associated with the agricultural development in the province. The required data are gathered through a questionnaire. According to the results from descriptive analysis, in economic aspect, “adoption of serious measures to improve productivity of production factors” by a variation coefficient of 0.174, in environmental aspect, “comprehensive and integrated management of soil nutrients and production base resources including water, soil, pasture and forest” by a variation coefficient of 0.152, and in social aspect, “expansion and orientation of extension activities towards enhancing farmers’ knowledge and information about operations of sustainable agriculture” are found to be the first priority in policies. In addition, as shown by the results from inferential analysis, most of the respondents have almost the same views within policy options. According to the results of factor analysis, the need to the policies with components consisting of the four factors including environmental, socio-institutional, productive-economic, and protective-supportive policies are explained by some 60.4 percent.