فصلنامه اقتصاد کشاورزی و توسعه
پیاپی 120 (زمستان 1401)

The agricultural trade balance, on the one hand, shows the ability to earn foreign currency in this sector and, on the other hand, indicates the degree of dependence on food security from imports. Therefore, study of effective components can lead to more effective policy choices in the future. Regarding economic sanctions against Iran, this study aimed at assessing the impact of international economic sanctions on the bilateral trade balance of Iran's agricultural sector with 45 major trading partners during the period 2001-2017. For this purpose, gravity model was used. The results indicated that international and EU-US sanctions had a negative effect on Iran's agricultural trade balance with its trading partners; in addition, this impact was insignificant for international sanctions and was statistically significant for EU-US sanctions. Therefore, it is suggested that Iran's dependence on the EU as the US most important trading partner be reduced to prevent a sharp decline in trade in future probabilistic sanctions.

Given the strategic importance of barley production in the livestock sector of Iran, the study aimed at analyzing the technical efficiency of irrigated barley farmers od Assadabad county of Iran and determining the various components affecting it using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach as well as Tobit regression model. The required data were collected by stratified random sampling through completing 180 questionnaires in 2019-2020. The study results showed that the average technical, managerial and scale efficiencies were 79.3, 82.5 and 96.1 percent, respectively; and 63 percent of the farmers operated in the increasing, 25 percent in the decreasing and only 12 percent in the optimal scale (constant returns to scale), which seemed reasonable to increase the scale of production to increase the efficiency; in addition, the most significant effects on the technical and managerial efficiencies were related to the experience, education of household head, number of plots and crop diversification and on the scale efficiency, were related to the number of plots, ownership of tractors and agricultural instruments and education variables, respectively, indicating the prominent role and high importance of these variables in improving production efficiency. Therefore, adopting policies to integrate and prevent the fragmented and dispersed lands, such as encouraging group activities and establishing production cooperatives, providing facilities to mechanize farms, appropriate and practical training to farmers and raising their agricultural literacy level, transferring the experiences of leading farmers to inexperienced farmers as well as encouraging the crop diversification is essential to increase the technical efficiency of irrigated barley production.

Due to the limited water resources in Iran, the optimal use of resources and increasing the physical and economic productivity of water in the production of products to achieve economic growth in the agricultural sector is absolutely necessary. Thus, the objectives of this study were to determine water productivity and profitability of irrigated wheat and forage corn production in different irrigation systems in Alborz province during 2016-2017. The indicators of physical efficiency and economic efficiency were used to estimate the efficiency of water consumption as well as the indices of net profit, product sales yield and percentage of return on investment were used to determine profitability. According to the results, water savings in irrigated wheat production in the drip irrigation compared to the center pivot and fixed classical sprinkler irrigation systems were estimated 6.3 and 22.8 percent and in irrigated forage corn production were estimated 15.2 and 27.6 percent, respectively. Net benefits of crops production in wheat-forage corn rotation in the drip irrigation, center pivot and fixed classical sprinkler irrigation systems were estimated 204.7, 174.2 and 153.2 Iranian million rials/ha, respectively. Economic productivity of per unit of water consumed in crops production in rotation in the drip irrigation, center pivot and fixed classical sprinkler irrigation systems were estimated 16.5, 12.3 and 9.1 Iranian thousand rials/ha, respectively, so that the net benefits and economic productivity of per unit of water consumed in crops production in rotation in the drip irrigation system was more than center pivot and fixed classical sprinkler irrigation systems. Thus, the drip irrigation system was recommended as an economically better irrigation system in the crop production rotation in Karaj.

The price forecasting and its changes trend is one of the most important factors in decision making and formulating strategies related to agricultural products. This study aimed at presenting a hybrid data mining model for accurate price forecasting of agricultural products, including nonlinear models of wavelet transform, genetic algorithm, deep neural network and Monte Carlo technique. This proposed model involved a two-stage hybrid model and the base model of nonlinear-nonlinear. In this proposed model, the genetic algorithm for determining the optimal lag of price time series, the wavelet function for the de-noising of price data, the deep neural network for price forecasting, the Monte Carlo method for simulating the most probable price probability and finally, the complex soft calculations for "out-of-sample forecasting with new data set" were used. Results of comparison of the proposed model including "Genetic Algorithm-Wavelet Transform-Deep Neural Network-Monte Carlo", through evaluation criteria, with three competing models of "Genetic Algorithm-Deep Neural Network-Monte Carlo", "Genetic Algorithm-Wavelet Transform-Neural Network-Monte Carlo" and "Genetic Algorithm-Neural Network-Monte Carlo" showed that the proposed model had the better performance in forecasting of future price of saffron compared to the three competing models. Also, the use of deep neural network compared to neural network, the application of wavelet theory for de-noising and also the use of Monte Carlo technique to simulate the predicted prices, increase the forecasting accuracy of future price of saffron. In addition, the use of soft calculations showed that the proposed model had the necessary efficiency and high accuracy for short-term forecasting of the future price of saffron. Therefore, the present study has a good position in achieving the index of maximum accuracy, scenario making of future price trends, sensitivity analysis of components affecting the price and finally, forecasting the future price. Accordingly, the use of the proposed model to forecast the price of agricultural products is recommended.

The real exchange rate, which measures the changes in relative prices and costs with a common currency, is the most important measure of competitiveness. Thus, in this study, relying on the available evidence and the econometric model, the determinants of the behavior of the real exchange rate in the Iranian economy were examined. For this purpose, firstly, the real exchange rate was calculated and then, using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), the impact of important economic factors on it was analyzed during the period of 1978-2018. The findings indicated the continuous downward trend of the real exchange rate during the last two decades (except for the years 2011, 2016 and 2017), which led to a decrease in the competitiveness of domestically produced products compared to imported goods, and this decrease was caused by the adjustment of the exchange rate. The nominal currency is disproportionate to the difference in domestic and foreign inflation. The study findings showed the negative effect of oil export income and non-oil trade balance variables and the positive effect of the money volume to budget deficit variable in the long term on the real exchange rate. It is recommended that the calculated real exchange rate and the analysis of its behavior pattern used in the present study to estimate the equilibrium exchange rate in order to evaluate economic policies such as agricultural policies.

Today, rapid changes in climate, trade policies and technology have led to production, price and income shocks in the grain market. This study aimed at investigating the food security of different groups of society due to production, price and income shocks using the multiple market equilibrium model. Due to the importance of cereal products, especially bread, rice and pasta in the food basket of Iranian households, production, price and income shocks for this group of food and their effects on food security of the households by urban and rural income groups as well as government and freelance jobs were surveyed. The required information was extracted from the raw cost and income data of urban and rural households from 2008 to 2018 through the Statistics Center of Iran (SCI). The results showed that the food security of the society is mostly influenced by the production shocks of grain products, so that with a twenty percent decrease in the production of grain products, the poor and middle rural households, respectively, with an average percentage of calorie changes of -15.6 and -10.9 were among the most sensitive groups; on the other hand, poor households with government jobs would suffer the most from the increase in the price of cereal products, with an average percentage change of 7.9 calories. Also, increasing the income of poor households might play an effective role in improving their food security, while increasing the income of middle-income households would change the consumption pattern of these households. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt appropriate price and income support policies in order to maintain the welfare of poor households.

Exchange rate fluctuations in the Iranian economy directly affect domestic prices through import channels of intermediate inputs and final consumer goods. Since 2018, following the intensification of US sanctions, one of the special policies of providing consumer goods to the society has been the allocation of preferential exchange to the import of basic goods. However, the number of goods subject to this policy decreased over time, until at the mid of 2022, only a few goods were subject to this policy. The policy of removing the preferential exchange of basic goods in 2022 has some effects on the price index and the cost of living of Iranian households due to the increase in import costs and also the price change of other goods. In the this research, the social accounting matrix of 2016 was used to investigate the effects of the increase in the price of basic goods, including livestock and poultry products (livestock inputs) and edible oil. The results showed that the increase in the price of livestock and poultry products and vegetable oil would increase the price index by 5.4 and 7.8 percentage units, respectively; and the household cost of living index would increase by 9.9 percent (full adjustment of prices) and 9.8 percent (with price adjustment in only 57 activities in the social accounting matrix). Also, the effect of the increase in the price of animal inputs and vegetable oil on the index of the cost of living of households with a lower income level was found to be much higher. On the other hand, the effect of the increase in the price of livestock and poultry products on the cost of living of households was estimated more severe than the removal of the preferential exchange obtained from oil exports. In addition, since the production units in the livestock and poultry sector are few and small, as a result of the removal of the preferential exchange, their working capital would increase more than five times just for the purchase of feed.

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.

Due to the growing trend of public concerns related to the increase in environmental instability of agricultural development plans in different rural areas, the evaluation of ecological security and ecosystem services is currently a major issue in the field of natural resources and environment. Dasht-e-Abbas plain of Iran is one of the areas suffered from environmental problems such as soil salinity and increase in the level of reeds due to the entry of transfer water. This study mainly aimed at determining the economic value of water through the production function and choice experiment. The required information was obtained through a questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with 108 farmers separately from both swampy and normal parts of Dasht-e-Abbas plain aquifer in 2021. The market results of swampy part showed that the final production value of water input for wheat crop was -964 IRI rials, indicating that the lost economic value of water input in this part would be about 200 billion IRI rials; in addition, in the normal part of the aquifer, the final production value of the water input for this product was 8584 IRI rials. In this way, the market value of water in the normal part of the aquifer was about 370 billion IRI rials. Then, the models of "mixed logit" and "mixed logit with interaction effects" were used to calculate the non-market value of water. The results showed that the farmers were willing to pay 7.5 million IRI rials per hectare annually to improve the environment. Therefore, the farmers of the swampy part would be willing to pay about 42 billion IRI rials, which is 25 percent of the lost income for the indirect use value and non-use value of water. This amount of payment can be used as a joint financing in connection with the improvement of irrigation, drainage with the participation of the government and the enhancement of training on the sustainable use of agricultural land and ways to prevent soil salinization based on problems related to irrigation by the farmers according to their needs.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of brand equity on the repurchase of dates according to the mediating role of customer satisfaction in Khuzestan province of Iran. The research was conducted in an applied method in terms of purpose and in a descriptive-survey method in terms of data collection. The statistical population included all customers of date products in Khuzestan province. Based on Cochran's formula, the sample size was estimated to be 385 respondents using random sampling method. The required data were collected through a standard questionnaire. Content and construct validity was used to determine the validity of the questionnaire; also, in order to measure reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability were used. The findings indicated the reliability and validity of the measurement tool. The collected data from the distribution of the questionnaire were analyzed in two descriptive and inferential sections (structural equations). In addition, the study findings indicated the effects of brand value on the intention to repurchase the dates (0.288), brand equity on customer satisfaction of the dates (0.759) and customer satisfaction on the intention to repurchase the dates of the province (0.598).

This study is aimed at evaluating the efficiency of 23 greenhouses of red-leaf lettuce using the vertical hydroponic method based on the data envelopment Analysis (DEA) method in Alborz province of Iran. The assessment results indicated high profitability of red-leaf lettuce farming so that the production cost of each bush would be less than 15000 IRI rials while the sale price of each bush would be nearly 100000 IRI rials. In this study, four main inputs including workforce, secondary capital for conversion of the ordinary greenhouse into vertical hydroponic structure, fertilizer, and other costs were assumed as the model inputs and the net profit was considered as the output of the model that should be increased. Considering the technical efficiency and scale efficiency, the return-to-scale ratio of the efficient greenhouses was constant while most of the inefficient greenhouses had an increasing return-to-scale ratio. The efficiency analysis showed that the inefficient greenhouses were small greenhouses with an area smaller than 1000 square meters, which should increase their area and save on the consumption of the mentioned inputs in order to achieve higher efficiency and change into efficient units. Accordingly, with an average reduction of 25 percent in the inputs, these units can maintain their previous levels of output.