Assessing the Changes in Cultivation Area and Profitability of Cotton Influenced by Government Supportive Policies: A Case Study of Gorgan County of Iran

The cotton as a strategic crop has the important role in creating job, foreign currency and increasing income in agricultural sector and related industries which has been considered by government. In the last couple of decades, the cotton cultivation area in Gorgan County which is one of the major cotton-producing regions has decreased considerably duo to high costs of production and continuation of import. Therefor the object of this study is mainly concentrate on assessing the influence of cultivation and profitability of cotton in Gorgan County influenced by government supportive policies using PMP. The data has been collected by filling out 295 questionnaires using the stratified random sampling method from farmers of Gorgan County in 2014-2015. Three cropping systems of cotton are considered in this study, including: mono-cropping, double cropping and intercropping systems and the governments supportive policies are measured in three parts such as cotton pricing policy, cotton production input subsidy policy and direct payment to cotton production policy. The result shows that the cotton production inputs subsidy has positive profitability among different government supportive policies, so that the most profitable one is related to the cotton mechanic harvesting policy with 1.78 percent of the change. According to results, it is recommended to increase cotton cultivation in Gorgan by applying production inputs subsidy.