مجله اقتصاد و توسعه کشاورزی
سال سی و ششم شماره 2 (پیاپی 55، تابستان 1401)

In the second half of the twenty-first century, economic change, population growth and globalization were the main factors driving the deforestation in the South Asian countries. To identify the effects due to socio-economic factors affecting deforestation in such countries, this study applied the spatial econometrics model based on data from 18 selected countries for the period between 2005 and 2015. The spatial correlation tests were showing that ignoring the effects of spatial correlation cause bias in results. The results of the model also confirmed the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the selected countries with a turning point of $ 5,107. Our findings illustrated that increasing GDP per capita in neighbouring countries through interregional mobility of inputs of production will increase deforestation in the target country. The increase in the exchange rate in neighbouring countries due to the increase in imports of forest products and the non-cutting of domestic forest resources will reduce deforestation in the target country. Increased population density and unemployment in neighbouring countries due to reduced job opportunities and increased migration to the target country, followed by increased demand for food and increased land demand, led to increased deforestation in the target country. Finally, increasing the human development index variable has reduced deforestation in the target country. However, changing this variable in neighbouring countries has not affected the deforestation of the target country. Therefore, in a world with increasing economic growth, it is suggested that to prevent deforestation by improving the human development index, eradicating the problem of unemployment, and eradicating poverty redouble efforts. As the results of this study showed, the population had a direct and significant effect on deforestation in selected countries. Due to the increase in population growth in different years, it is recommended that the population issue be given more attention by looking at the requirements of sustainable development to reduce environmental degradation, mainly deforestation. Because according to the results of this study, the lack of rapid population growth reduces deforestation in selected countries.

Water is one of the main basic resources for development and is the most significant factor in Iranian agriculture production. The agricultural sector has an important role in production, employment, and gaining exchange and drastically affects other sectors of the economy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of water resources` reduction on agricultural sub-sector and other sectors` employment. The employment data were collected from SAM, 2011 and the employment generated by the economic activities of the economic sectors and the contribution of each of these sectors to employment was examined. The service sector ranked first with 24.99% employment creation and agriculture ranked second with 19%. Construction, industry, commerce, and transportation sectors ranked third to sixth, with 82.4% of the total employed working in these six sectors. The results showed that with water resources reduction by 10, 20 and 30%, the total employment decreased to 416334, 769472 and 1044114 people, respectively. In agricultural sub-sectors, the highest decrease was in farming and horticulture subsectors with an average of 14.17%.  According to the results, water saving technology was a solution to reach the major goals of agricultural development, especially for employment.

The pattern of knowledge-based production has recently changed economic and social relations. If one wants to use the benefits of this pattern, they have to pay serious attention to the production, distribution, and dissemination of knowledge; in this regard, Leading Knowledge (LK) plays a vital role in developing areas. However, since government budgets have to be spent for public, especially for science and technology which are too expensive, it is impossible to experience the simultaneous advancement in all branches of knowledge. This qualitative and descriptive analysis adopts an applied approach, and tries to identify the LK of the agricultural sector in Kermanshah province, Iran. First, the initial list of LK and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method based on key technology techniques were prepared through reviewing documents and surveys, i.e. interviews and a panel of experts. In-depth and purposeful interviews were also adopted to extract experts’ opinions. Finally, data were analyzed by a panel of experts using the Analytic Hierarchy Process in Expert Choice (EC) software. The results showed that water engineering (0.223), horticultural Science (0.196), and biotechnology (0.138) were listed in order of priority in Kermanshah province. The results can be helpful in revising the educational policies of universities and research centers at the province level, allocating limited resources to the relevant government organziations, Agriculture Jihad and related research centers, and determining the policy of science and technology park and agricultural research centers at the national level.

Price bubbles and price fluctuations of agricultural products are important issues that can significantly affect the welfare of consumers and producers. Therefore, in this study, the price bubbles in three main protein products, i.e. lamb, beef, and chicken meats, were investigated by the state-space model based on the Kalman filter using monthly time series data on the price of selected protein products from June 2001 to November 2020. We considered barley, concentrate feed prices, broiler chicken, and corn prices as the main important inputs used for producing lamb, beef, and chicken meat production, respectively. Also, real exchange rate and real oil price were used in the model. The results showed the differences in structures making positive and negative price bubbles, period and number of occurrences and the collapse of the bubble during the sample period. Also, in contrast to chicken prices, we concluded the price bubble of lamb and beef, is not significant compared to the real prices. For chicken meat, the main cause of price bubbles was due to the disruption of the marketing process of agricultural products, the lack of transparency of information, and contradictory government interventions in the market. To deal with the problem, the implementation of aggregated market information through merging technologies in Information and Communication Technology could be considered an efficient tool as suggested. In addition, government intervention should be prioritized on reforming the market structure instead of controlling prices.

There are four interconnected markets, i.e. oilseeds, crude oil, meal and edible oil, in the vegetable oil supply chain. Nowadays, emerging tools in context of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have critical role to develop the supply chain. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize actors' preferences for using blockchain technology in the vegetable oil supply chain. For this purpose, we applied the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. We interviewed 15 experts, including scientific specialists from adjacent fields and actors in the vegetable oil supply chain, in 2021, to determine the weight of the pairwise comparison matrix. This study evaluated the leading indicators of management improvement, performance improvement, data security, transparency, traceability and visibility, as well as their sub-indicators. The calculation of final weight revealed the most relevance of sub-indices, i.e. increasing inter-organizational trust, compatibility and secure data compatibility, with value of 0.467, 0.043 and 0.043, respectively. The rest of the indicators were also ranked as data immutability, close relationship with suppliers, degree of privacy, forecasting, strategic planning capabilities, reduction of lead time and doing the order on time, respectively. The lack of trust between circles and actors is thus the most crucial obstacle and the largest potential for the new chain in the current supply chain. More training and knowledge of supply chain players on emerging technologies should be put on the agenda to achieve optimal supply chain management. Our results also suggested solutions for advocating for the planning and development of the required infrastructure for the implementation of blockchain technology in Iran.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of aggregation different types of pulses as well as sugar, using the single and multiple hypotheses test. The former hypothesis tests include Composite Commodity Theorem (Leontief and Hicks) and Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem (GCCT) and the latter hypothesis tests include the Bonferroni, Simes, Holm, and Hochberg procedures and the results of mentioned methods were compared. Data of the period 2006-2018 for this study were obtained from the Statistics Center of Iran..The results of multiple tests of Bonferroni, Simes and Hochberg for different types of pulses showed that with the exception of “mixed pea and bean”, other products can be aggregated into the group of Pulses. Also, based on the results of Bonferroni, Simes, Holm and Hochberg, different types of sugar can be aggregated into the group of Sugar. The results of the individual hypothesis test are not the same for different types of pulses and different types of sugar. In other words, according to Leontief method, the hypothesis of aggregate the different types of beans together was not confirmed, while according to Hicks method, this hypothesis was confirmed. Similarly, according to the Leontief method, the hypothesis of aggregate the different types of sugar together was rejected, while according to the Hicks method, this hypothesis was confirmed. The result of the GCCT showed that all types of pulses (except “other beans”) can be aggregated into the Pulses group. The types of sugar can also be aggregated into the Sugar group according to the generalized composite method. Based on the results, when the number of observations is low, the use of single tests and specifically the GCCT will not show the exactly same results, which confirms Davis (2003) finding that the GCCT does not guarantee proper aggregation of goods. In these cases, multiple tests would be recommended.

Due to increase of consumption of fast foods in Iran, the factors affecting the consumption level of sausages, salami and hamburgers have been investigated in this study. For this purpose, we investigated the probability of each household being in groups of non-consumption, low consumption, medium consumption and high consumption using an ordered logit model and data of 396 households of Mashhad, in 2020. The results of the ordered logit model indicated that variables such as price, income, consumption of other meats and education level of consumers do not have a statistically significant effect on the level of consumption of prepared meat products. While variables such as awareness of the existence and effects of nitrite, information about cheating in the product and awareness about the materials used in the ready-made foods have a negative and significant effect on the probability of consuming these kinds of foods. Accessibility of households to the fast foods and households' trust in the producers also have a positive effect on the likelihood of consuming the ready-to-eat meat products under question. Regarding the importance of controlling fast food consumption in society, we concluded that improving awareness of consumers about the properties of fast foods and their consequences effects on health could be considered as an important tool to control fast food consumption