Structuring a Conceptual Model of Determinant Criteria on Crops' Prioritization to Be Selected in Crop Pattern

Agricultural sector is one of the main production sectors in each country. Increasing the growth and efficiency of this sector requires the development of a proper, accurate and realistic model of crops planting based on different goals and criteria, in order to provide the benefits of the whole beneficiary community in long term. The purpose of this research was to identify, validate and rank the effective criteria on crops prioritization for being selected in the cropping pattern, using a hybrid research method of exploratory factor analysis and analytical network process. In order to achieving the research goals, in the first phase, by aid of literature reviewing, effective criteria on crops prioritization have been selected, and then by using exploratory factor analysis method and application of SPSS 25 software, these criteria have been loaded on 6 factors named: cultural and social, political, passive defense, water, environmental impacts and economics. The final step of this phase was the construction of the conceptual model of the factors and effective criteria. In second phase the criteria were ranked by using analytical network process method and application of Super Decisions software. According the results the most important criteria in the process of assessing the prioritization of crops are listed as below: “Domestic Resource Cost” with a weight of 0.2277, “consent culture” with a weight of 0.1468, “risk taking attitude of farmer” with a weight of 0.1160, and “crops’ irrigation water demand” with a weight of 0.0754. The conceptual model can facilitate the selection process of crops and ease the designing of optimal crop pattern.