Farmers Preferences to Plant Crops for Bio-Energy production (Case Study: Sugar Beet in north of Khuzestan Province)

Bioenergy is one of renewable energy types. The expansion of production this type of energy can create employment and sustainable income for society in addition to reducing pollution caused by fossil fuels and protecting the environment. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to investigate the preferences of sugar beet farmers in the north of Khuzestan province to the presumptive contracts of sugar beet planting to use in production of bioenergy. The statistical population of the research included 1890 sugar beet farmers of Khuzestan province in 2017-18 which 320 people were selected through the stratified sampling method. The required data were collected in person by referring to farmers and completing the questionnaire. Factors influencing the preferences of farmers were identified using the experimental approach of the attribute-oriented declared choice method to determine the important attributes of different sugar beet planting contracts and to estimate the conditional Logit regression model. The estimation results of the Logit model showed that coefficients related to the contract period, the area covered by the contract, the contract price, the cost-sharing in the contract, the product insurance in the contract and experience of sugar beet planting are positive and significant. The coefficient of the interaction of the variables of attitude to energy production, area under sugar beet planting, Experience of planting sugar beet and the area under sugar beet planting with ASC is significant and positive and the coefficient of the interaction of Farmer's risk attitude with ASC is significant and negative.