Identify the Challenges of Sustainable Agricultural Development in the South of Kerman Province

The use of unconditional production inputs to increase performance over the last decade which leads to the degradation of the environment and human health, has underscored the importance of sustainable agriculture and continued production along with the preservation of natural resources. In this regard, identifying the barriers and challenges of sustainable agricultural development seems essential. In fact, agricultural planners and policy makers can use them to plan for sustainable agricultural development. Therefore, in this research, this issue has been investigated in southern Kerman province, which has a significant share in agricultural production. In this survey research, the statistical population consisted of all farmers who were selected as a sample farmer in 2001-2017 by the Agricultural Jihad of south of Kerman province (N = 374). The data were gathered through a questionnaire and library studies. In order to determine the validity of the content, the experts used the Cronbach's alpha (0.81) to verify the reliability of the instrument. However, to analyze the data were analyzed by SPSS18 and LISREL8.5 using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in the present study. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that 5 factors, Supportive, research-promotion, market and product, technical, technological, and cultural-social, respectively, were 19.9, 18.6, 14.5, 10.4 and 7.3 percent of the variance, in which 70/90 percent of the total variance of the sustainable development challenges in the south of Kerman province is explained. We call development "sustainable" times that are not destructive and provide the opportunity to preserve resources, including water, soil, genetic resources, herbs and animals. In sustainable development, the principle is that basic natural resources are protected in such a way that future generations can at least produce and consume the current generation. The southern province of Kerman, with its significant share of agricultural production in the country, continues to use the principles and methods based on the Green Revolution in its agricultural activities. This has led to the concerns about the negative effects of modern agriculture on human health, the environment and natural resources. In recent decades, in response to these concerns, the development and application of a new form of agriculture to sustainable agriculture has been considered. One of the measures that was considered essential for sustainable development in agriculture was to identify and investigate the challenges and obstacles it faces to the elite farmers in the region, which is the aim of the present study. The statistical population of the study includes the top farmers of Agriculture - Jihad Organization in Jiroft, Kahnouj, Anbarabad, Faryab, South Roodbar, Manoujan, Qaleh Ganj areas in the South of Kerman province during the years 2001-2017. 374 people were present who were interviewed but we succeeded to collect 320 questionnaires. The data gathering tool in this research was a questionnaire with two parts of individual and professional information and challenges of sustainable development in the south of Kerman province. Major challenges to sustainable agriculture development were extracted from previous research and allocation opinions and were given to elite farmers to express their opinions. In order to determine the validity of the content, a preliminary questionnaire was given to the experts and made the necessary reviews and corrections. In order to calculate the reliability of the Cronbach's alpha method, the pre-test of sustainable agriculture challenges scale was 0.81, indicating an appropriate reliability of the research tool. In this research, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods were used by spss18 and Lisrel 8.8 software. In the first stage, the data analysis was used for exploratory factor analysis. The KMO coefficient and Bartlett statistics were used from the perspective of farmers in southern Kerman province to determine the suitability of the data collected in the context of factor analysis of the challenges of producing sustainable products. The value of this coefficient was 0.76, which indicates that the correlations between the data are suitable for exploratory factor analysis. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that five extracted factors, Supportive, research-extension, market input and product, Technical and technological problems, cultural and social problems with special value, 3.6, 5.9, 4.6, 3.2 and 3.2, respectively, were 19.9, 18.6, 14.5, and 4, respectively. 10/7/7% of the variance, and, in total, 90/70% of the variance of the total sustainable development challenges in the south of Kerman province. In the second stage, the confirmatory factor analysis was used. The results of the fitting indices, standard factor loads, t and P-values ​​indicated that the model fitted and verified the results of the exploratory factor analysis. Due to the global importance to transfer from traditional agriculture to sustainable one, it is necessary to recognize the barriers and challenges of sustainable agricultural development. In fact, this way can pave the way for the planners and managers of the agricultural, environmental and health sectors. In this research, five categories of the most important challenges of sustainable development of agriculture were identified in southern Kerman province. The most important of them are policy and management challenges.  Supportive challenges are the lack of appropriate insurance for products, lack of incentive rules for farmers to use sustainable farming principles, unproductive import of crops with similar domestic production, poor enforcement for agricultural development programs in sustainable agriculture development. Establishing appropriate policies to support and support producers, they maintain the ability to produce high quality and quantity, which can focus on the production of healthy products for the sustainability of production units in each of the three, including the economic, social and environmental dimension. Therefore, policymakers in the country and the region do not provide the required policies for this sector by establishing a national document on sustainable development in agriculture.