Investigating the Impact of Direct Payment Policy to Cotton Producer on Cropping Pattern of Gonbad Kavous County

As a strategic product, cotton has played an important role in creating employment, earning foreign exchange and increasing income in the agricultural sector and related industries, which has always been the focus of government attention. This product plays an important role in agricultural, industrial and commercial job creation, and its importance in agricultural job creation is 2.5 times higher than that of soybeans, 4 times higher than that of corn, 4 times higher than that of rapeseed, and 6 times higher than that of wheat. In recent years, the area under cotton cultivation in the Gonbadkavus district, one of the most important cotton growing areas, has decreased considerably. One of the main reasons for the decline in cotton acreage in Golestan province is economic. In this context, various support and promotion measures have been taken, e.g. seed subsidies, direct payments to producers and guaranteed purchases by the government. On this basis, this study examined the impact of the direct payment policy for cotton producers in the Gonbadkavus district.  In this study, the impact of direct payment policy for cotton producers on cropping pattern in Gonbadkavus district was investigated using positive mathematical planning (PMP) method. The necessary information was collected by completing 93 questionnaires among the farmers of Gonbadkavus district using a random sampling method. After modeling the existing cropping patterns in Gonbadkavus district, the effects of direct payment policies for cotton producers were studied in five scenarios including 2500, 5000, 7500, 10000 and 12500 thousand Iranian rials per hectare.  The results showed that with the different direct payment policy scenarios, the cotton area of 2551 hectares under the current conditions in Gonbad Cavus district increased between 10.58 and 52.91% in the first and fifth scenarios. The total profit also increased between 0.21 and 89 in the different scenarios.  The government's direct payment policy to cotton growers has increased cotton cultivation in Gonbadkavus district, and the total area under cultivation and total profit have not only decreased but also slightly increased. Thus, the implementation of this policy has resulted in the replacement of cotton product with other low profit products and the total profit has not decreased. Therefore, it is suggested that the government take supportive measures to increase cotton cultivation in Golestan province in order to achieve goals such as increasing employment and meeting the demand for raw materials in the province.