AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS: IRANIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS (ECONOMICS AND AGRICULTURE JOURNAL)
Year:2007 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:13

In transition from traditional to commercial agriculture, farmers are facing major problems in marketing of their products. In many countries agricultural cooperatives have assisted farmers to market their products but in Iran rural cooperatives have done little to help their members in this respect. The purpose of the paper is to illustrator major agricultural marketing problems and the possibility of expanding rural cooperatives to remedy these problems. To achieve this purpose, a sample of 3886 cooperative members and 159 cooperative managers in eight provinces were selected for interview. The results of the study revealed that farmers facing major problems in marketing of their products, notable among them were low and fluctuating income due to sale prior and during harvest, lack of storage facilities and market information. Rural cooperatives did not have the necessary infrastructure and human resources to get involved in marketing functions. Low levels of members' participation were considered as another obstacle. Finally, some recommendations are made to empower rural cooperatives for marketing services.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of supply and demand determinants as well as government policies on determination of corn price in Iran. This study is conducted applying a parametric model of stocks-to-use ratio to time series data for 1999-2005. The model also addresses issues regarding the influence of government loan policy on corn price determination. The results revealed that the ratio of stocks-to-use, ratio of government stocks-to-use and the dummy variable of government policy had major role in corn price determination.

This paper explores the effects of general and agricultural trade openness on economic freedom and hence, alongside the quality of institutions, on income and poverty. Recent cross-country data for over 200 nations in global regions were used to estimate equations for income, poverty and economic freedom. Economic freedom appears to have positive impacts on income levels which, alongside good institutions, reduce poverty. It is also concluded that poverty is determined both directly and indirectly by institutions. A finding of this paper is that, in general, economic freedom is associated with trade openness and with agricultural trade liberalization, which is therefore important for poverty reduction in institutional as well as in direct income and consumption terms.

Kerman is the largest province in Iran and main producer of greenhouse and outdoor vegetables in the country. A random sample of 138 greenhouse and 144 outdoor vegetables farmer was selected from the province of Kerman in 2005. The technical efficiency and TGR indices are computed using three approaches in this paper. First, a standard stochastic production frontier was employed using pooled cross-section data. Secondly, separately stochastic frontier production functions were estimated for greenhouse and outdoor. Lastly, the metafrontier approach was used for computed the TGR. Results indicated that average technical efficiencies for greenhouse at three above methods were about 77%, 84%, and 70% and for outdoor farmers were about 75%, 70% and 14% respectively. TGRs for greenhouse and outdoor were about 0.83 and 0.2 which demonstrated deep Technological Gap between two methods.

This study, aims to assess the impacts of macroeconomic policies on agricultural sector in Iran. considering problems associated with the earlier models, two sector general equilibrium model with growth accounting approach to measure the effects of exogenous variables on endogenous variables, was used in this paper. The overall results indicated that the policies impact on of agricultural products was negative. Also, changes of macroeconomic policy variables including liquidity, government expenditure and exchange rate had various impacts on food consumption and agricultural investment. Non-agriculture prices had negative effect on production and consumption of products in agricultural sector.

In this study, insurance premium rate for wheat was calculated, using a nonparametric method, for the major wheat producer's provinces of Iran. Then, their relationships with coefficient variations (CV) of yields, as a measurement of yield fluctuations, were studied. Also, guaranteed price of wheat was estimated by using Autoregressive Moving Average [ARMA (2, 3)] method. Findings showed that there were a positive relationship between the coefficient of variations and the calculated fair premium rate. Khorasan had the lowest variability in irrigated wheat yield as well as the lowest premium rate compare to other provinces. However, wheat insurance premium rate in Khuzestan was the highest due to its high yield fluctuation. In terms of dry wheat yield, East Azerbaijan showed the lowest coefficient of variations.

The main objective of this paper was to study the globalization impacts on wheat import demand. Regarding the relation among import, domestic supply and demand, a model including cropping area, yield, domestic demand, and import functions applying data set over 1980-2003 period was estimated. In order to investigate the effect of globalization, Integration of International Trade (IIT) criteria were applied.The results revealed that globalization had not significant impact on supply, domestic demand, and import of wheat. The effect of globalization was found statistically important only on cropping area of wheat. Import demand function showed that population and domestic production were most important variables affecting wheat import. Despite the theoretical bases, world-domestic price ratio showed a positive impact on import. In addition, the correlation between import and world-domestic price ratio was positive.

Pistachio is one of the important agricultural products, which cultivated in dry areas and the country earns sizable income from export of product. This paper aims to study Pistachio production and export trends and the country's competitiveness power in the world market as well. Time series data on cultivated area, production and export were collected for penal of 1991-2002. Destination data on Pistachio exports from Iran and USA were gathered for period of 1996-2003. Exponential Trend Equation and Constant Market Share Model were applied to achieve the goals of the study. Results revealed that cultivated area increased by 5. 2 percent, but the growth rates for other factors were not significant during the period of the study. Market distribution and competitiveness effects had the most important role in export changes during first period while, commodity composition and market distribution effects were crucial factors affected changes of Pistachio export during second period.

The objective of the study is to investigate economic situation of strawberry producers in Sanandaj. The research was carried out through a field survey and the data was collected by' questionnaire. The sample was selected by stratified random sampling method and data analysis was done by descriptive as well as analytical inference statistics such as analysis of variance and Duncan test. The results indicated that the majority of strawberry was produced in small farms in which the yields were higher than the large farms. However, the average variable costs of the large farms were less but their profit margin was higher than those of small farms. In order to increase producers' profits, several recommendations were made including appropriate marketing, improvement of irrigation techniques and improvement of the productivity of household laborers.

Agricultural product insurance is part of the overall safety net of programs for Iranian farmers provided by government. It provides protection for farmers against the financial losses caused by natural disasters. In order to benefit from this safety net farmers must first make a decision to adopt; agricultural insurance. The aim of this paper is to determine the factors that influence farmers' adoption of agricultural insurance. A multistage stratified random sampling technique was used to collect a representative sample of farmers in a nation wide survey in 2003. A total of 1470 farmers were interviewed using a questionnaire.Three models, diffusion, farm structure and multiplicity were used to investigate the determinants of agricultural insurance adoption. The multiplicity model was proved to be the most powerful model for prediction of agricultural insurance adoption among Iranian farmers. The findings revealed that awareness, amount of loan, risk proneness, distance from insurance agent, commitment to agricultural bank and farm size were the major contributing factor to adoption. Finally recommendations are provide to reform the system of agricultural insurance.