Agricultural Sciences and Technology
Year:2007 | Volume:21 | Issue:1 (SPECIAL ISSUE IN ECONOMIC & AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT)|Papers Count:6

Various studies indicate that farmers are facing with risk in agriculture: such as no control on athmospher factors, pests and diseas and condition of markets for demand and supply for crops and inputs. in this study Logit econometric model was used for the effects of studing economic - social factors on farmers risk aversions in varamin region farmers of Tehran province. Data were collected from 80 questionarity of varamin region farmers in 2004. results indicate that some of economic social factors have significant effects on farmers risk aversion in usage of pesticides in this region.

The main purpose of this study is to determine different product yields, production costs, resource requirements and export of agricultural production in Khorasan Razavi province based on global prices. For this purpose mathematics programming and econometric techniques were used. The survey data were collected by completing farmer's questionnaires in Khorasan province and by using data from Iran Statistical yearbook and different databases such as FAO data of zoof.org. The results show that joining to the World Trade Organization makes crop advantage reduce for some products such as irrigated wheat and dry farming wheat and barley as well as most of the horticultural crops and also crop advantage increase for products such as sugar beet and specially pomegranate.One of the most important products in Khorasan Razavi province is saffron that it's crop advantage is expected substantially to decrease because of it's low yield rate.

The research design for this study was a descriptive and correlation survey method. The Statistical Population Compose of Rural Beneficiaries of The Private Extension Agencies and all the Public / Private Stakeholders. The Sample Size was 247 Rural People Calculated through Cochran formula.Meanwhile all the public/private stakeholders using census-taking approach were also interviewed.Three Questionnaires were designed for this research and the survey was including personal characteristics on the target population and questions related to the studies objectives. Likert-type scales were used to quantify the responses. Content and face validity were established by a panel of experts consisting of faculty members at college of agriculture (extension and education department) of Tarbiat Modarres university and Tehran university. Questionnaire reliability was estimated by calculating Chronbach alpha.Reliability for the overall instrument was estimated at 73%. The findings revealed that there were significant relationships among land holding, farming experience and the rate of participation in extension activities of the rural beneficiaries and their viewpoints on the performance of private sector agencies. Moreover there was significant relationship between educational level of the public stakeholders and their viewpoints.

The general objective of this study is to develop an appropriate model for analyzing the effects of direct govermental payments, income and wealth on agricultural investment. An improved dynamic model was built on the basis of the cost of adjustment theory to estimate the impacts of direct govermental payment on agricultural investment for western Canada and northern tier U.S. The results indicate that direct govermental payments have positive and significant impacts on agricultural investment in most regions.Furthermore, the results indicate that the impacts of direct govermental payment are much larger than the impacts of farmers' wealth and income. Based on the results, adjustment rate of capital for U.S. agriculture is much larger than Canada. The results from the estimated elasticities, indicate that there is a slight increase from short-run to long-run for the U.S.and Canadian agriculture.

This study estimates the irrigated and dry land wheat Comparative advantage in Mashhad plain.The goal of this study is to analyze the water input effect on wheat production (water is scarcity input in this area). For achieving this goal the production data of 1997-2005are used and then the wheat comparative advantage estimated for this period. In this study the Domestic resource cost, Social cost benefit and Net social profit indexes are estimated. Results showed that comparative advantage existenced in irrigated and dry wheat farming but in dry farming is more than irrigated farming.

In this study, the reaction of farmers to possible changes in the price and supply of irrigation water aimed at encouraging water-use efficiency and their effects on the social and private benefits were analyzed by using positive mathematical programming method and considering 12 scenarios.Scenarios considered are: increasing 20, 40, 60 and 100 percent in the price of water along with 10 and.20 percent reduction in the available water supply; 80 percent increase in the price of water and 50 percent decrease in the water supply (drought condition); 20 percent increase in the price of water and 10 percent decrease in water supply (in Mashhad plain); liberalization of sugarbeet and fertilizer markets along with 10 percent decrease in water supply at the farm level. The finding showed that, under conditions of markets failure (externality) and distorting polices, raising water price and decreasing water supply, increase social benefit at the expense of private benefit.Farmers react to increasing water price by changing their cropping patterns but, do not necessarily decrease their total water consumption. However, the amount of water applied to each crop may increase. Decrease or remained unchanged. Results also showed that, in the presence of market failure and distorting policies, drought may not affect social benefits significantly. Moreover, the effects of product and factor price policies on the cropping patterns were different. That is, decreasing product price results in greater change in cultivated are acompared to increasing input prices.Based on the finding of this study, it can be concluded that, careful identification of policy target seems to be important in policy decision.