JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS RESEARCH
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue:1 (13)|Papers Count:11

In this study, agricultural sustainability of selected townships of Fars province evaluated using model of agricultural sustainability and compromise programming method. In this regard, data were collected from various sources such as Fars province Agricultural Organization and Fars Regional Water Authority in 2006. Townships of the province were classified into three groups, namely, sustainable (Kazerun, Lamerd, Mamasani and Abadeh), relatively sustainable (Lar, Eghlid, Firozabad, Fasa, Darab and Arsenjan) and unsustainable (Marvdasht, Estahban, Shiraz and Jahrom). Results indicated that townships in sustainable group had groundwater balance, more diversity in crops and lands with more organic substance. Furthermore, high nitrate concentration in groundwater, negative balance of groundwater, inefficient irrigation system, and over utilization of pesticides and chemical fertilizers were remarkable features of unsustainable group.

The objective of this study was to forecast amount of electricity consumption in agricultural sector of Iran. To achieve this objective, time series method of Auto-Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were used. Annual data for period of 1967 to 2008 was used. The Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE), Root of Mean of Squared Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) criteria were used for comparing the ability of different forecasting methods. Results showed that Feed Forward Artificial Neural Network with back proportion algorithm could predict electricity consumption with MAPE equal to 1.02% while the corresponding value for time series model was 1.13 percent. Other criteria also revealed the same result, so, ANN is expected to predict electricity consumption more precisely compare to ARMA model.

Several studies have estimated production function in agriculture. Most of them have used econometric methods. Recently, the heuristic algorithms have been widely used in optimization problems. In this paper, genetic algorithm model compared with Auto regressive distributed lag approach to estimate production function in agriculture. Time series data related to agricultural value added, labor, energy and capital was used for 1978-2008. Comparing the results of two methods based on two criteria of Root Mean Square Error and Coefficient of Determination indicated that genetic algorithm was more suitable than ARDL approach for estimating production function.

This paper aims to determine the effects of some microeconomic variables such as interest rate, foreign exchange rate, money supply, GDP and subsidies on Iran's agricultural sector income in co-integration framework. For this purpose, Johansen Model with annual data for 1976-2008 were used. Results showed that there were long-run relationship among selected macroeconomic variables and income of agricultural sector. Interest rate and exchange rate had negative and positive relationship with agricultural income respectively both in short and long run. Also, prices of agricultural commodities and money supply had negative effect in the long run, but positive effect in the short term on income of agricultural sector. The results also showed that payment of subsidy to agricultural sector had not significant effect on agricultural income.

In this study, factors affecting welfare of pistachios exporters were estimated using ARDL approach under constant and floating exchange rate management. Also, volatility of real exchange rate was estimated with GARCH (1, 1) model. Result showed that the price elasticity was 1.1 and 1.6 in two different foreign exchange management, respectively. Welfare surplus of pistachio exporters under two types of price elasticity was estimated. Results showed that welfare surplus of pistachio exporters under floating exchange rate policy were higher. Also, exchange rate volatility had negative effect on pistachio export in the log run. Finally, it was suggested that floating exchange rate policy should be adopted to protect pistachio export.

With respect to role of cattle breeding industry in food security and also the place of Tehran province in animal husbandry sector, technical, allocative, economic and scale efficiency of dairy cattle farms in Pakdasht and Rey counties in southern of Tehran was investigated. For this purpose, efficiency of dairy cattle breeding farms was evaluated using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Data were collected from documents, observation and interview with farmers. Results showed that half of the producers were technically efficient. Although about 51 percent of producers were technically efficient but their allocative and economic efficiency levels were low. The average technical efficiency of farms was 0.93, but the average allocative and economic efficiencies were 0.45 and 0.42 respectively. Results showed that 40 percent of producers were scale efficient. Assessing returns to scale, results showed that returns to scale of 37 producers was increasing, 2 producers was decreasing and 26 producers was constant. Results indicated that inefficient producers must decrease consumption of alfalfa, corn silage, concentrate, medicine and health care costs to increase efficiency.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of real exchange rate volatility on export of agricultural sector in Iran over period of 1974-2007. For this purpose, first, the exchange rate volatility index was estimated using EGARCH (0, 1) and then, in an econometric model, the effect of exchange rate volatility index on export of agricultural sector was determined. The results of Saikkonen and Lutkepohl co-integration test showed that there was at least one co-integration vector between variables of the model. The results of co-integration vector estimation using the FMOLS approach indicated that exchange rate volatility had a significant negative effect on export of agricultural sector. Also, the empirical results showed that, in the long-run, the world GDP and Iran’s GDP variables had significant positive and the export price index had a negative effect on agricultural export. Based on the empirical results, in order to increase agricultural export, adopting policies to decrease the exchange rate volatility was recommended.

The aim of this study was to investigate the determinants of supply and demand of rice in Iran during period 1981-2007. In order to estimate factors affecting supply of rice Nerlove partial adjustment model was used. Results showed that supply response of farmers to price changes was negligible. Interventionist government policies (import) had negative impact on farmers' production incentives. Also, on the basis of results, possibility of increase in production through acreage expansion was low. Therefore, increase in production should be focused on increasing yield per hectare. The results showed that among factors affecting demand, income is relatively more effective compare to price. Also, population, consumption habits were among factors affecting demand.

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors affecting comparative advantage of raisin export in Iran for period of 1961 to 2009. Besides, comparative advantages of major raisin exporting countries were calculated and compared. For this purpose, three indices, namely, Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) and Chi square measure (X2) were calculated. The results of RCA index showed that the trend was highly fluctuating. Also, comparing the calculated comparative advantages of raisin export for major exporting countries indicated that volume of production and export were not necessarily related to their comparative advantages. Factors affecting comparative advantage of raisin export were investigated through estimating a vector auto regressive (VAR) model for period 1961-2008. The results indicated that variables such as exchange rate, amount of domestic production, production of competing countries and world export price had positive effect on comparative advantage of Iranian raisin export while fluctuation in production had a negative effect on it. It was concluded that in order to increase comparative advantage attempts should be made to reduce production fluctuation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine broiler marketing margin for 2001-2010 period. For this purpose, rational expectations model was applied. Monthly data of producer and retail prices of broiler were obtained. Estimation Results of reduced form showed that broiler retail price with one and three lags would cause marketing margin to increase and with two lags could decrease it. Also, Results showed that inventory-to-sales ratio affected marketing margin positively. Therefore, to reduce marketing margin, expansion of cold storage capacity was recommended.