The Strategies to use the Abandoned Agricultural Lands around Sanandaj

Agricultural land use change, agricultural lands abuse and abandonment of farms around the cities are of the most important challenges facing agriculture and rural areas. In recent decades, these changes have resulted different social, economic, and environmental consequenses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the strategies to prevent agricultural land use change and the optimal use of agricultural abandoned from the viewpoint of farmers. The statistical population of this research was the farmers of Sanandaj city (N=4900). Sample size is determined using Cochran formula (n = 357) and a systematic random method is used for sampling process. The data gathering tool is a questionnaire, which is validated by the experts from Kurdistan's Agricultural-Jihad Organization and its reliability is confirmed during a pretest by Alpha Cronbach test and it is 0.88. Structural equation modeling is used to identify the strategies to prevent agricultural land use change through confirmatory factor analysis method. The results showed that the strategies for using the abandoned agricultural lands can be divided in four groups: socio-economic, technical-structural, managerial-monitoring, and legal- policy. Based on the results of a confirmatory factor analysis, from farmers' point of view, the most effective solutions are legal- policy and managerial-monitoring respectively. Legal - policy solutions in the research area, Sanandaj, can affect other factors and, in a large extent, prevent the use of agricultural land around the city. Therefore, it is necessary to manage this problem by establishing basic and transparent laws and enforcing binding policies on land uses around the city with serious planning and monitoring.