Production and exploitation mode of Absentee farmers from village’s resources (case study: Hoome rural sub district, Harsin county)

Extended abstract 1- Introduction Thanks to improvements in transportation and communication technology and expansion of various spatial interactions nowadays villages are more dynamic than to the past. In such condition not only traditional concept of rural –urban dualism but also uniform look to rural groups and stratums turns pale. More than every time location selecting for life’s basic functions isn’t limited to a unique geographic place and as a result multi-spatial families formed. Absentee (urbanized) farmers are obvious example of such evolution. Their seasonal presence in villages created distinct pattern of water and soil resources’ exploitation in compare with resident farmers. Hence the research main question is that absentee farmers’ emergence has what impacts on organizing production procedure and exploiting villages’ resources. To this end the research was conducted at Hoome sub district in Harsin County. 2- Methodology This research is a descriptive- analytical and from the viewpoint of objective is an applied one. Data gathering conducted via documentary and field work. On the basis of theoretical principles and local interviews various indices regard to ownership and possession, production and income and major crop production procedure identified and investigated. Population size consists of 286 rural or urban householders. According to Cochran’s formula a 140 sample size selected from 196 households resides in 6 villages of mentioned sub district. In addition 90 urban householders were head counted. Research instrument was questionnaire that its validity approved by expert panel and Reliability confirmed via Cronbach’s alpha (&alpha = 0.838). Besides descriptive statistics we utilized independent T-test, Mann-Whitney Test and Spearman correlation for analyzing data. 3- Discussion Findings revealed that absentee farmers had between 8 to 30 years of residential background in towns. Main pattern is commuting among city and village and 75.5 percent of commuters have 1-2 days of presence in village. Absentee farmers’ activities in gardening and animal husbandry are severely fewer than their rural counterparts and about 94 percent of them merely involved to tillage. While rural respondents had no secondary jobs about 63 percent of urbanized farmers engaged in some side works such as construction working and shop keeping. Irrigated and horticultural lands of absentee farmers were lesser than rural farmers. 71 percent of urban respondents had no house in the village and this figure was less than 1.5 percent for their rural counterparts. The recent group owned considerable part of its necessary farm machinery, but absentee farmers provide most of its needs through renting. They had lower performance than the rural farmers in regard to considering crop rotation and cultivating second crops. Also they had much more dependence on wage earner workforce and despite their familiarity with insurance culture had little tendency to crops insurance. Their annual income was fewer than permanent farmers and meanwhile invests more little part of their earnings via farming in the village. Independent T test and Mann-Whitney Test approved significance of differences between two groups in the mentioned cases. Absentee farmers in compare with rural counterparts assess their performance much weaker regard to all of production phases (planting, harvesting and post harvesting) and Spearman correlation indicated that this weakness to large extent related to distance from village, years of living in city, duration of seasonal residence in village and farm size. 4-Conclution Absentee farmers as a kind of multi-spatial households created distinguished lifestyle and livelihood strategy. Their mode of production can be assigned as one type of part-time farming through which they attempt to exploit and earn income from their resources in the village meanwhile availing urban life advantages. Although some experts believe that this method of life is a transition phase to emigration and leaving the village permanently, but as this research revealed, duration of this transition is long-lasting and may be extended one or more generation. Thus the problem can’t be ignored as a temporary and transient subject. Continuity to exploiting household’s resources in village in compare with abandoning it is the advantage of this lifestyle that can be encouraged in the case of deserted and depopulated villages. But considering lower performance and productivity than resident farmers, in the case of rural settlements with water and soil limitation and population surplus turns into an obstacle for rural development. Therefore in rural planning for the country’s villages considering their populational condition and productive resources necessitate. Also comprehensive understanding of rural peoples’ livelihood strategies and pathology of current trends of production and resources exploitation must be prioritized