Sustainability Assessment of Rice Production in Iran Using Composite Indicators (A Practical Methodology)

The purpose of this study was to develop a practical methodology to assess the sustainability of rice production by composite indicators. This methodology includes five stages which end hierarchically calculating composite indicators. Thus، indicators were the main core of assessment، then the procedure of choosing indicators، selecting the best ones، normalization and weighting of them and how to calculate composite indicators are described. The number of 11 indicators in three dimensions of economic، social، and environmental by experts’ opinions and data limitations were selected. Data were accessed from ministry of Agricultural Jihad website. The results showed that due to high rate of employment per hectare، Golestan province was ranked as the most sustainable among other provinces in social sustainability، Fars province in economic and Guilan in environmental sustainability. From the overall sustainability ranking، Fars province was ranked as the most sustainable producer of rice in Iran and Khuzestan province was ranked as the last one. The results also showed that the methodology of sustainability assessment using composite indicators due to simplicity and practical، can be useful tool to calculate sustainability of agricultural crops like rice.