Identifying and Ranking the Problems of Guaranteed Purchase Policy of Agricultural Products and Alternative Solutions

Guaranteed purchase policy is one of the government's support policies that has been implemented in Iran since 1989 for some products. Therefore, this research was implemented through the paired comparison questionnaire completed by all managers and officials of the Central Rural Cooperative Organization as the policy executive institution as well as provincial executives in Fars, Khuzestan, Ardabil, Golestan, Isfahan and Kerman provinces and also, purchase managers in 2017. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to identify and rank the problems of guaranteed purchase policy and prioritize solutions to solve these problems. Based on the study results, the identified problems of the guaranteed purchase policy included legal and institutional, administrative and organizational system, pricing, quality grading and separation, credit and financial, and storage and processing facility issues, respectively in a priority-based order. Also, the suggested solutions according to the obtained weights for the mentioned issues using pairwise comparisons and the AHP method were respectively determined in a priority-based order as selling in the form of an auction or price inquiry, selling in the form of ignored formalities, selling in the stock market and paying the difference to farmers, providing loans facilities, subsidizing the production and continuing the current situation by improving the issues. Therefore, it is recommended to use the guaranteed purchase policy along with policies to increase performance and productivity to be more effective in increasing the income of farmers as well as investing in the production of agricultural products and reducing poverty and consumption of inputs in the agricultural sector.