JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS RESEARCH
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue: 3 (15)|Papers Count:10

Considering that rural cooperatives in Iran facing problems such as low level of members' participation and providing services, this paper aims to review agricultural cooperative experiences in some selected developing countries in order to propose policies to remedy present situation. Selected countries for study were South Korea, India, Thailand, Phillipine and Malaysia. In addition, a sample of rural cooperatives in Fars province selected and data were collected through interviews with their mangers and members. Based on the study, policy implications were provided as basis for making some reforms in Iranian rural cooperative network, notable among them were expanding cooperative activities in areas such as saving, credit and marketing of members products.

Poverty is an important socio–economic feature that affects the economic activities of rural farmers, since the socio–economic characteristics are effective on farmers' risk aversion behavior, risk assessment becomes more important with the consideration of poverty. In this study, inputs risk of Pomegranate production in the villages of Shahreza's central region were analyzed, using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and generalized stochastic production function. Poverty status of farmers was examined, in the three groups with low, medium and high-risk aversion, by calculating the poverty index. Then the risk aversion parameter was calculated, based on input elasticity of production function, and the effect of socio-economic characteristics of farmers on it was evaluated. Also, the gap between farmers' income and absolute poverty line was considered as their poverty category, which was intended as the dummy variable affecting the risk aversion parameter. The farmers under studying were selected through two stage cluster sampling of Pomegranate farmers in villages of Shahreza's central region. Results of the estimation show that inputs of cultivation areas and fertilizers have positive effects on pomegranate production risk and the amount of water, manure and labor have negative effects on it. In addition, poverty was recognized as an increasingly and family size and cultivation area were recognized as reducer factors on risk aversion parameter. Finally, it was suggested to applying the policies of providing phosphate and nitrate fertilizers on the suitable time, extending product insurance and reducing poverty to achieving the aim of risk management for producers.

Commercialization of agricultural activities and being followed by widespread use of agricultural herbicides in agricultural production causes serious environmental problemst. Despite policy makers alert to need to achieve sustainable agriculture, most farmers looking to achieve maximum production and among in this regard, they have the least considering to environmental aspect of production. Due to this problem, this paper tried to study the consistency of farmers' economic and environmental behavior to manage weeds using a cross sectional data of 180 wheat growers in Khorasan Razavi selected in 2009 as selected by random sampling method and using regression and spearman correlation coefficients. The results showed, that farmers in the use of pure technology and 3, 4 and 5 scenarios in the environmental management of weeds, increase farmers' income and the amount of chemical pesticide per unit area decreases, that this relationship indicating consistency of farmers' economic goals (gross incomes) and environmental goals (reduction of chemical pesticide use) to weeds management of wheat farms. In other conditions correlation coefficient is also positive and show inconsistency of farmers' economic and environmental goals. Therefore recommended to planners and policy makers with coordination the Executive to promote agriculture in the province to promote and expand the use of methods of environmental management of weeds in wheat.

In this study the efficiency of 44 units of fishery, broiler farm and dairy farm was measured in the year of 2009 using Data Envelop Analysis. The efficiency of each firm was calculated based on the outputs of production units such as employment and income. The results indicated that the propriety of efficiency was in the first, second and third in the towns of Gachsarsn and Dena, Bahmaei, and Kogilooyeh respectively. In fishery, the town of Dena was in the first rank, in broiler farms the town of Bahmaei was in the first, Boyer Ahmad was in in the second, Gachsaran in the third and Dena and kohgilooyeh were in the fourth and fifth respectively. The Average of efficiency in all production units was 85%. According to low necessary capital for a job opportunity and suitable condition of Province in fishery, investing in this activity is recommended.

Emission tax is of environment protecting policies in economy context. This study also was conducted while aiming at investigating economic and environmental impacts of emission taxation levied on pollutants emitted from fuel and production process in Iran. To get the objective a computable general equilibrium framework based on the Iranian social accounting matrix of 1999 as well as emission data for 2009 was used. The considered pollutants are CO2, CH4, N2O, CO, NOx and SO2. The pollutants also were taxed based on World Bank (2004) damage cost. The results showed that levying a tax on fuel and production emitted pollutants leads to output expansion in services and some of agricultural sectors while it makes industrial and energy sectors output to fall. It was also found that in the highest taxation level, levying fuel and production based pollution results in reduction of GDP and households consumption by less than 1.5% and 2.5% respectively while it entails pollutants emission reduction by 2.5-3.5%.

Droughts and climatic fluctuations are the most important challenges of the range-livestock management for ranchers of nomadic which largely depend on natural rangeland. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate livestock management strategies including partial liquidation and purchasing additional feed during periods of drought for nomadic ranchers. For this purpose, a multi-period, linear programming model coupled with the dynamic process of animals was applied. The data are collected by questionnaire completion of chosen sample into nomadic communities with multi-stage random sampling method and by Affairs Organization of Nomads Fars province. Results indicate that purchasing additional feed is able to carry larger herds during the drought. Therefore purchasing additional forage has a larger gross income than partial liquidation of livestock but requires additional costs for purchasing additional feed as compared with partial liquidation strategy. These additional costs lead to decreased net returns in all scenarios and are more risky than partial liquidation scenarios when extended drought occurs. However, the purchasing additional feed has negative impact on profitability compared to partial liquidation of livestock in the long run drought and increase degradation intensity of rangelands. The partial liquidation of livestock tends to be less risky and create potentially less financial stress than purchasing additional feed and during drought results in better net returns than purchasing feed to overcome constrained forage supplies. Therefore base on the results, in the long run partial liquidation of livestock is recommended.

Agricultural activities have been always faced with production, price and income fluctuations. At the time, attention to management procedures can be very useful in order to reducing these fluctuations. Income insurance with covering risks due to fluctuations in prices and production, able to covered the fluctuations of crop income. The purpose of this study is to design income insurance in order to reducing the income fluctuations of Darab cotton tillers. Required information were collected through questionnaire which was conducted in a sample 50 Darab cotton farmers by a multi stage sampling random method. Furthermore, due to forecasting futures values, time series data that collected from various recourse of cotton tillers cooperative union and agriculture organization was used. For computing the insurance premiums, a statistic simulation method called bootstrapping was used. The results relative to computed income insurance premiums, analyzed with two hypotheses such as direct and indirect relationships between yield and price. Ultimately, it became clear that applying direct relationship between yield and price due to negative correlations of these two variables can cause reduction of income insurance. Comparing the present value with computed income insurance premiums showed the superiority of income insurance scheme. The value of income insurance premiums for poor and rich farmers with assumptions "0.9 loading coefficient and 65% government subsides", computed 0.81789 and 25.60451 dollars respectively. At the end its presented suggestion to aim the appropriate risks management. The most important suggestion is creation a bilateral solidarity between farmer and insurer, Another one is election of income insurance scheme as final policy for poor group.

Targeting group of products through existing techniques such as comparative advantage is an essential step on agricultural development track. In this study comparative advantage and protection indices for Sunshade and Canola have been calculated for Kermanshah province by using policy analysis matrix (PAM) for crop year of 2007-2008. Results coming out of comparative advantage index (DRC) for oilseed production showed that Kermanshah province has comparative advantage in producing sunshade rather than canola. Examination of index attributed to nominal protection crop (NPC) showed that market prices of oilseeds are higher than their shadow prices comparatively and government policies have led the prices of these products to be set at higher place than marginal price under shadow exchange rate. This Indicates an indirect subsidy allocated to producers of oilseeds in the province. Analysis resulted by index of nominal protection inputs (NPI) for oilseed production process indicates that the farmers have been supported for tradable inputs. Therefore increase ongoing of effective support to canola, expansion of acreage for canola and continuation and increase of price support policy for sunshade in the province are suggested.

Today increasing productivity is the most and effective ways to achieve economic growth. The purpose of this study is to analyze factors affecting labor productivity in producing major crops in central region of Mamasani Township in Fars province, Iran. Data were collected by filling up questioners through interviews with a sample of 358 farmers from 24 villages in Mamasani Township in farming year of 1386-1387 (2007-2008) who were selected by stratified random sampling. Factors that affected labor productivity were ages, experience, sex, level of education, farm size, participating in training extension programs, number of visits with extension men and access to credit. The analysis was done by using a multiple regression model. The results indicated that the level of education (primary school), farm size, degree of mechanization, membership in cooperatives, participating in extension programs, visiting of farm by extension men and village location had positive effect on labor productivity. Variables such as level of education of high school Diploma, experience, ratio of amount of loan to current costs had negative significant effect on labor productivity. The results of this research suggested that enlargement of farm size, increasing level of mechanization, extension and training program and farm visits by extension men should be encouraged and facilitated by the authorities and policy makers.

Limited water resources in Iran and excessive use in irrigated farms, especially in rice cultivation has revealed necessary to increase valuable water factor productivity in rice cultivation. This study has been conducted to calculate and analysis of non-parametric indices of water partial factor productivity in rice cultivation in Mazandaran province, Iran. Thus, data were gathered from production cost of 690 rice farmers in the Jihad-e-Agriculture database of Mazandaran province in 2010 if that were selected by simple random sampling. The results of this study shows, with the increased acreage in the province, increase productivity of water consumption. Also, high-yielding varieties of rice seeds than other rice varieties its highest value is assigned in nonparametric partial productivity indices. These indicators can be compared to experts, managers and decision makers to identify existing problems and ways to help improve water productivity.