International Journal of Agricultural Management and Development
Volume:11 Issue: 2, Jun 2021

Agriculture is considered a driving force to reduce poverty and food insecurity. However, the agricultural sector has been unable to meet the growing food need of the rural population and it has been influenced by various risks. Although income diversification strategies supplement farmers’ farm production, the extent of households’ income diversification sources and their associated factors are not yet empirically identified in Agarfa District. Thus, this study aimed to measure income diversification strategies and identify factors responsible for the choice of income diversification strategies among rural households in the district. The study drew a sample of 150 households using the stratified random sampling technique from three kebeles of the district. Quantitative data were collected by interviews while qualitative data were collected by focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to characterize households’ income diversification strategies. Results show that agriculture has a leading contribution to the total income of households (88.89%) followed by non-farm (10.12%) and off-farm activities (0.99%). Furthermore, the results reveal that the mean diversity indexes increase from households engaged in housemaid activities (36.67) to households engaged in crop production (38320.00). The study, therefore, concludes that the agricultural sector alone cannot improve households’ income, ensure food security, and alleviate poverty in the study area. Thus, rural development policies and strategies should focus on promoting income-generating activities besides agricultural activities in rural areas to improve the overall wellbeing of the rural communities.

The poultry industry is one of the most important economic resources, having one of the most voluminous parts of human resources.Its scope and the growing consumption of related products have raised the need for innovation in it.This study aimed to provide a poultry industry regional innovation system model, with a pilot study on three provinces of Guilan, Mazandaran,and Golestan in Iran.This was a pluralistic, applied, descriptive survey with quantitative - qualitative data.The statistical population included Iranian experts in the poultry industry.In addition to using library resources, questionnaires and interviews were also used to collect data.The snowball sampling was used to select experts.Five experts were selected for interviews and 32 received questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SPSS and Modeler software, as well as the multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network. This study employed the Functional-Structural Analysis approach to provide apoultry industry regional innovation system model. Overall, 15 actors, 29 institutions and six functions were identified. Data analysis confirmed the model. The findings showed that the most important indices of structural elements were Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) among regional innovation system actors, and implementing policies to attract domestic technology and international capital among regional innovation system institutions.In addition, the results showed that all the functions of the innovation system were of great importance, among which only the innovation and entrepreneurship indices had a relatively lower performance, which requires policymakers to take measures to improve them.

Designing and developing a proper plan for entrepreneurship in rural areas have turned into an imperative task, which can be defined considering the capabilities, culture, and local norms in each region. The statistical population of the present research, which aimed to design and present a proper paradigm for planning by formulating entrepreneurship indices tailored with local attributes and their climatic conditions, was composed of rural users in Masal County in Guilan province, Iran. The main research instrument was a questionnaire whose validity was achieved by collecting the opinions of experts and scholars through the Delphi method and whose reliability was estimated by Cronbach’s alpha to be 0.66-0.83 for different sections. The participants were 486 individuals including rural entrepreneurs, Dehyars, Islamic Rural Council members. The exploratory factor analysis was employed to reduce the research variables to fewer factors and determine the contribution of each factor in rural planning. Based on the results, the personal factors influencing entrepreneurship planning included 14 variables. After the varimax rotation of the driving factors, they were classified into four indices of pragmatism, ambiguity tolerance, creativity and ideation, and achievement motivation. From the participants’ viewpoint on the personal factors, the indices of risk-taking, ambiguity tolerance, creation and ideation, and achievement motivation were the first to fourth important factors influencing entrepreneurship planning, respectively.

Research on the relationship between dual-labor market, food security, and general health in rural areas has been scarce. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dual-labor market increases the income and consequently the food security of rural households and whether it also improves the general health of the heads of these households. To achieve this goal, a descriptive cross-sectional survey with comparative designs was performed to study the relationship between research variables. The statistical population comprised of the heads of rural households living in the rural district of Mahidasht in Kermanshah County, Kermanshah province, Iran. Overall, 283 household heads who were chosen by the systematic sampling method were interviewed. Food security and general health were measured using the 18-item Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM-18) and the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The validity of the research instrument was assessed and confirmed by the expert panel at Razi University and its reliability was established using the Cronbach's alpha. Data analysis was performed using SPSS16 and AMOS. The results showed that dual-labor market significantly increases the income of the household heads who work in secondary labor forces, and as a result, they enjoy a higher degree of food security in their households. However, a closer examination showed that the income generated from secondary labor market has a significant inverse correlation with the general health of these household heads, as they are more likely to suffer from severe depression, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction.

Organic products with the positive impacts that they have on health and the environment in the future will establish a new way of thinking about the relationship between food, health, and nature in human life. Therefore, it is important to examine the key factors that may affect the consumer’s mind to purchase organic food products. The present study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the actual behavior of organic product buyers. Data were collected by the field method, and a questionnaire was used as the data collection instrument. The statistical population of the study included the consumers of organic products in Guilan province, Iran. Due to the unlimited size of the research population, 384 people were sampled by the convenience random sampling method. Model evaluation and testing of hypotheses were performed by structural equation modeling in Smart PLS software. The research findings demonstrated that perceived price, health consciousness, availability, organic knowledge, and subjective norms were the key determinants of organic buying behavior and showed a significant positive impact on consumer attitudes. Consumer attitudes also influenced purchase intention and purchase intention on actual buying behavior. It was also found that consumers would be more willing to buy if they learned more about organic products and their environmental benefits. In addition, the results showed that preparing a brochure to introduce organic products and provide the results of studies on organic products to buyers and forming environmentally friendly groups and associations can change the attitude of buyers.

The present study aimed to design a model for the professional competencies of greenhouse production unit managers in South Khorasan, Iran. The research was of applied type in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlational in terms of data collection, which was conducted by survey method. The statistical population consisted of 117 managers of greenhouse production units, who were surveyed through census because of their limited population. A questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. SPSS and Smart PLS software were employed for data analysis. For all competencies, Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were estimated to be greater than 0.7. The analysis of structural equations with partial least squares (PLS) supported all hypotheses. Finally, the model of professional competencies was identified with seven competencies including managerial, individual, business environment, theological-ethical, technical and professional, academic, and general agriculture competencies, among which the managerial and individual competencies were the most important ones from managers' viewpoints. It is, therefore, suggested that managers need to continually update and modify their management skills and information in order to make right decisions in dealing with new and different issues and reach the ultimate goal of production.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges that affect different parts of human life on the earth. Due to its very close relationship with natural resources and climatic conditions, the agricultural sector is the most affected by this change. Thus, this study aimed to identify the factors affecting the capacity of wheat farmers to adapt their careers to climate change in Gachsaran County, Iran. The research was an applied study in which field data were used in a descriptive-correlational and causal-correlation design to analyse the relationships of the variables. The research population was composed of 1845 wheat farmers working in Gachsaran. Using Cochran’s formula, 318 farmers were selected for the study through simple randomization. A questionnaire, which included personal and professional features, the factors affecting the farmers’ adaptation capacity, and the farmers’ perceptions of climate change, was developed by the researcher. An expert panel was used to address the validity of the developed questionnaire. Using Cronbach’s alpha, the reliability of the questionnaire was measured to be at the acceptable level of 0.72. The results of the multivariate regression showed that social capital, quality of life, the number of people aging over 60 in the family, the number of family members contributing to agriculture, income from agriculture, access to educational services, age, academic degree, total agricultural land, level of experience, and wheat yield per hectare accounted for the bulk of variance in the dependent variables (39.77%).

The main purpose of this study was to provide a model of the factors affecting the success of marketing Iranian organic agricultural products using a qualitative approach based on grounded theory. The data collection instrument was semi‐structured interviews with 12 marketing managers of companies producing organic agricultural products selected by the purposive sampling technique. Data analysis was performed in three stages of open, axial, and selective coding in which 343 key concepts, 111 codes, and 32 subcategories were identified and classified into five main categories including "product‐related factors", "price‐related factors", "promotion‐related factors", "consumer‐related factors", and "production‐related factors". Finally, a comprehensive model of the factors influencing the marketing success of organic agricultural products is presented.

This research was carried out with the main objective of investigating the role of non-farming activities on the sustainability of peasant farming systems in Osku County through a descriptive-correlational research method. The population of this study consisted of peasant farmers in Osku County (N =1400), Out of which 300 people were selected as sample using Table of Krejcie and Morgan’s for sample size determination. Proportionate stratified sampling technique was applied to select the samples. The data were analyzed by SPSS win18 software. The main instrument of data collection was a questionnaire which its validity was confirmed by experts. The reliability of the main scales of the instrument was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient, which was between 0.82 to 0.87. The results of analyzing three dimensions of sustainability stability showed that the total extent of sustainability level of 29.3% of the farming units was "unsustainable ", 41.7% was "semi-sustainable" and 28.9% was "sustainable". The results of regression analysis showed that the variables of the number of employed in the non-farming sector, the use of non-farming income in the agricultural sector and household income out of non-farming activities accounted for 54.2 percent of the variations of sustainability level in the peasant farming systems.

Water scarcity has made water management one of the top priorities in the world because of climate change and population growth on the one hand and increasing demand for food on the other. The present study aimed to simulate the effects of conservation policies on water resources in the Dashtab plain, Iran, using the positive mathematical programming (PMP) method. Data were collected by a questionnaire for which 136 questionnaires were filled by randomly sampled experts of Agricultural Jihad Organization. The results showed that out of the three policies adopted in this study including limiting irrigation inputs, reducing irrigation input subsidies, and reducing crop prices, reducing subsidies on irrigation inputs were the best policy to protect irrigation resources and farmers' incomes.