فصلنامه اقتصاد کشاورزی و توسعه
پیاپی 119 (پاییز 1401)

Given the important role of the agricultural sector in ensuring Iran's food security, it seems necessary to simultaneously focus on the quantity and quality of products. The study aimed at comparing the efficient production and standard production of energy and key nutrients in livestock and poultry sub-sectors of the country's provinces using data envelopment analysis method. The required information was collected from the Ministry of Agriculture-Jahad (MAJ), USDA database and the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) in 2016. The results showed that the average technical efficiency of production in the provinces of the country was 90.8 percent and the average amounts of food security effectiveness in energy, protein, vitamin A, riboflavin, calcium and iron production were 93.9, 98.9, 88.2, 95.7, 59.9 and 99.8 percent, respectively. Also, the provinces were divided into three groups including efficient and effective, inefficient and effective, inefficient and ineffective. It is suggested that the production model of the provinces of the first group might be used as a model, taking into account the requirements of other provinces; in addition, in the provinces of the second group, the composition of production could be changed in such a way that the effectiveness of food security would be achieved in ineffective factors (mainly, calcium and vitamin A); finally, in the provinces of the third group, the strategies leading to improved technical efficiency should be used.

The performance of Bank Keshavarzi of Iran (BKI)/ Agriculture Bank of Iran in the field of facility repayment indicates a decrease in the amount of facility repayment, which can be a serious issue for the survival of financial and credit institutions. Therefore, this study aimed at ranking the factors affecting the credit risk of agricultural facilities in fattening units in Ardabil province of Iran. The data was collected in 2019 through questionnaires and interviews with banking experts and facility recipients. The results of the logit model showed that the variables of being a previous customer of the bank, years of repayment, experience, amount of facilities and cash flow at the level of five percent and variables of hall area, farmyard and number of installments, education and ownership at level ten percent would affect the repayment of the facility; in addition, based on qualitative analysis, from the facility recipients’ viewpoints, the most important factors affecting non-repayment would include the lack of food input at a reasonable price and lack of government support, natural disasters and failure to evaluate the plan at the current price.

Financial fragility causes financial crisis and subsequent decline in economic growth. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effects of instability in financial development policies and inflation uncertainty on the economic growth of agricultural businesses with emphasis on employment and entrepreneurship. Thus, it was an applied research in terms of its purpose and a descriptive study in terms of its nature. The research was done in the form of a library study using quarterly data from 2013 to 2019. Econometric methods including the Dickey-Fuller unit root test and the moving average method were used to estimate exchange rate fluctuations as well as the Johansson-Juselius method or the vector autoregression method with distributive intervals based on the stationary and unit root of the variables was used. The research findings indicated that in the short term, increasing inflation uncertainty reduced the economic growth of agricultural businesses by 6.19 percent. Therefore, it can be concluded that the instability of financial development policies and the uncertainty of inflation cause businesses to have difficulty in their decisions and fail to predict and plan their future activities as well as disrupt the production process of firms in the economy of the agricultural sector. According to the study results, the government should avoid financial liberalization before providing infrastructure, and increase agricultural exports and economic growth through trade liberalization.

Given the fact that one of the main limitations of growth and development of Iran's agriculture sector is 'capital', this study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the facilities granted to projects to improve and increase the livestock and poultry production in Razavi Khorasan province of Iran. For this purpose, the concerned criteria were identified by Delphi technique and using the structural equation technique, the impact of effective factors on the effectiveness of the facilities granted to the projects was measured. The combined index of the effectiveness of the facilities granted to the plans for improving and increasing livestock and poultry productions were almost moderate, estimating 48.9 and 47.3 percent, respectively. Among the effectiveness indicators of the facilities granted to the plan to improve and increase livestock production, the indicators of 'improving milk quality', 'increasing conversion ratio and added value of milk production' and 'increasing conversion ratio and added value of red meat production' and among the effectiveness indicators of the facilities granted to the plan to improve and increase poultry production, the indicators of 'improving egg quality', 'increasing conversion ratio and value added of egg production' and 'increasing conversion ratio and value added of chicken meat production' had the least effectiveness. In general, the facilities granted to the beneficiaries of the above plan during the studied period in Razavi Khorasan province were not effective due to various factors such as unfavorable economic conditions in the period under review, changes in laws and regulations, frost, drought and finally, the lack of support and assistance of the banking system. Therefore, it was suggested to the authoriries of the agriculture sector to create a balance between the return and the interest rate of repayment, the assistance of the banks with the loss-bearing beneficiaries and especially, the development of agricultural insurance.

Despite the development and acceptance of various value extraction methods for public goods and ecosystem services, these approaches may be affected by a number of critical biases causing the results of studies to be different from the real value of resources. The values obtained in hypothetical markets may be affected by Social Desirability Bias (SDB) significantly. This bias is mostly the result of incorporating social traditions and the interviewee's expectations into the answers of questions by other respondents rather than trying to leave truthful answers. This study aimed at investigating the presence of SDB in the economic valuation of the environment through comparing the application of conventional Contingent Valuation (CV) techniques and Inferred Valuation (IV) method. For this purpose, the individual values stated by respondents and their prediction of behaviors of other respondents were compared, focusing on the estimation of the recreational benefits derived from Nematabad Dam Lake in Asadabad County of Iran. The resulting mean willingness to pay (WTP) for recreational value of the concerned lake per visitor (household) in conventional CV technique was estimated by 153,568 IRI rials (US$ 0.56) while in IV method, it was estimated by 116,478 IRI rials (US$ 0.42) for each visit in 2021. A comparison of the calculated WTPs confirmed the presence of overestimation in the CV method, compared with those of the IV method. In other words, a comparison of individual values expressed by respondents and their prediction of other respondents' behaviors would confirm the research hypothesis assuming the presence of SDB in the conventional CV approach.A comparison of the calculated WTPs confirms the presence of overestimation in the CV method compared with the IVM. In other words, a comparison of individual values expressed by respondents and their prediction of behaviors of other respondents confirms the research hypothesis, i.e., the presence of SDB in the traditional CV approach.

Oilseeds are one of Iran's major imported items in the agricultural sector, and the per capita consumption of edible oil in the country is about twice the global per capita consumption. Therefore, considering the increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and obesity in the society, and on the other hand, the body's need for fatty acids and the necessity of using oils in cooking all kinds of food and sweets, it is necessary to determine the factors affecting the amount and type of oil used by households. In this regard, the present study was conducted in 2018 on 245 households living in Mashhad city. Sampling of the statistical population of the research was done by a simple random method and data and statistics were collected by completing the questionnaire. Data processing was also done using descriptive statistics methods as well as ordered logit and multinomial logit regression models. The results of the study showed that the variables of importance to health, education, awareness of the presence of palm and the number of family members had an effect on the type of oil consumed. According to the results of the research, the share of liquid oil in the total household oil consumption is 41 percent, and the share of local oil consumption in the household diet is estimated to be around 2.4 percent due to its high price. Despite being useful, natural oils make up only about 24 percent of the total household oil consumption. Therefore, it is suggested that the benefits of using natural and local oils compared to other oils should be explained to the society through appropriate educational and promotion programs as well as by informing consumers more.

Agriculture may be particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on natural weather patterns and climate cycles for its productivity. Global warming may also threaten food security in the case of its negative effect on agriculture. Therefore, there is the need to empirically examine the effect of climate change on agriculture. This study aimed at investigating whether or not the climate change would be influencing the level of strategic crops production in Iran. For this purpose, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to estimate the impact of climate change on wheat, barely, maize and rice production. The results of historical data (1961-2014) estimation revealed that no significant negative effect of climate change on the selected crops production were observed yet either in the short term or in the long term while rice, barley, wheat and maize products, respectively, had the highest speed of adjustment in response to any shock and deviation from their long-term equilibrium state as well as in terms of the impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, the maize crop would have the greatest increase in production and rice would have the least positive impact per one percent increase in carbon dioxide. In addition, it was found that over the last half century, some negative effects of climate change were seemingly offset by more intense use of water and soil resources, though it would be no longer possible. Therefore, 'application of advanced technologies' and 'extension of climate-smart agriculture' could be considered as the appropriate solutions to prevent the catastrophic consequences of climate change on the agricultural sector. Also, according to the study results, some applicable adaptive measures were suggested to oppose any adverse shock to the crops production in Iran.

Water, food and energy (i.e. fossil fuels and electricity) are the three basic elements in the economic system that international reports emphasize the need for attention to the relationship between them in order to achieve sustainable development. Considering the various consumption trends and shocks affecting the connection of water, food and energy in Iran, this study aimed mainly at tracking the price effects that can be transmitted by each of the components of the connection to each other in the face of exogenous price shocks. To obtain price transfer patterns, the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) was used. In this regard, the incremental coefficients analysis approach was used, considering its ability to show the distributional effect of price shock through the economic system according to the purpose of the present study. Also, the technical-economic coefficients of water, food and energy connection were calculated by considering interactions with other economic sectors. The results showed that not only the price coefficients were different in the general state, but also in the analyzed state, it indicated the transfer of the price in an unequal way; and since food and energy had different subsectors, their price interactions were also completely different; in other words, the price effects of energy sub-sectors on food sub-sectors had significant differences. Therefore, if economic policy is made without paying attention to price coefficients, indirect effects in the economic system will lead to negative consequences. So, it is suggested that before adopting the economic policy, the results of the price transfer should be taken into consideration in the form of guide tables and appropriate policy should be made according to the possible consequences.

Given the climate change and the need to protect the environment, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, it is necessary to adopt a new mechanism for the equitable allocation of scarce water resources and the resulting benefits among stakeholders. This study used a Cooperative Game Theory (CGT) framework in order to analyze water management under water scarcity and drought conditions in Qarehsou River Basin of Golestan province of Iran. The required data were collected through a survey research and completing the questionnaires in the cropping year of 2017-2018. Loehman stability index was used to investigate the willingness of stakeholders to participate in coalition and the determination of stability. The results showed achieving full cooperation would increase the total benefit of basin. The study of the stability index showed that in general, the grand coalition based on Nash-Harsanyi was more stable than the Shapley value and Nucleolus in drought scenarios. As a result, the cooperation between stakeholders should be increased in the form of basin coordination councils to protect the ecosystem and preserve the economic interests of basin in conditions of water scarcity. The CGT solutions and power index examined demonstrate the importance of combining the strategic behavior of stakeholders in designing acceptable and sustainable policies to reduce the effects of drought in the basin. Therefore, it is recommended to apply Nash-Harsanyi solution to redistribute the benefits of cooperation between stakeholders in the basin; in other words, the distribution of cooperative benefits between stakeholders is based on relative weights, which is calculated based on the maximum demand of water users in the non-cooperative model within a cooperative theory.

Doroudzan Irrigation and Drainage Network (DIDN) plays an important role in the production of agricultural products in Fars province of Iran, but it has faced serious problems due to low precipitations and indiscriminate water extraction. Considering the importance of estimating the amount of water consumption productivity for water resources management, this study aimed at calculating the agricultural water productivity in the DIDN network using Crop per Drop (CPD) Index, and to investigate the effects of the change in the irrigation system "from surface to pressurized" on the variables in the productivity index, the assessment model of Soil, Water, Atmosphere and Plant (SWAT) was used in 2013-2014 cropping year. The study findings showed that in the DIDN network, the CPD in terms of the sum of irrigation water and effective precipitation (CPDIP) is equal to 0.606 kg per cubic meter. In addition, based on the study results, changing the irrigation system from surface to rainwater can lead to an increase in the productivity index in terms of actual evaporation and transpiration (CDPET) and CPDIP index by 23 and 46 percent, respectively. Therefore, it can be said that one of the important measures in order to improve the efficiency of agricultural water consumption in the Doroudzan Irrigation and Drainage Network (DIDN) is the development of pressurized irrigation system.