Journal of Agricultural Economics and Development
Year:2011 | Volume:19 | Issue:1 (73)|Papers Count:11

The purpose of this causal-comparative research was to investigate factors influencing on discontinuance of these systems applying. The target population included all adopted farmers these systems who minimally has produced and harvested one agricultural crop by using them in Mahabad township, West Azerbaijan province (N=195) in 2007-2008 farming year, out of which, a number of 124 farmers by using Krejcie and Morgan's table was selected as statistical sample in proportional stratified sampling method. Study results showed that approximately 30% (n=36) of farmers discontinued to use SIS. The findings indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between continuing users and discontinued users of SIS regarding some dependent variables. The result of Discriminant analysis showed that "river as water source", "the amount of system economic consequences", "the amount of baking supports of SIS maintenance", "the amount of extension-educational supports of SIS maintenance", and "age" were identified as the most discriminative factors (99% of population), affecting use discontinuous of SIS.

The aim of this study is to assess the state of food Security in CIRDAP member countries and ranks the countries with respect to their food security performance. As the Food Security is a multi-criteria issue, in order to define the ranking process, the Multi-Criteria Decision Techniques, (i.e. AHP and PROMETHEE) are used.The results show that Malaysia stand in the first rank regarding "food quality", "food consumption quantity and trends", "access to food", and "impacts of food security programs". Also, findings of the assessment indicate that on the basis of integrate criteria of food security, Malaysia, Iran and Thailand stand at first to third rank respectively.

The main purpose of this study was to examin the circumstance of bank credits effect on production and export of agricultural sector over the 1984-2006 periods. First, by using time series analysis, stationary and cointegration between variables were analysed and long-run relationship was estimated. To this end, the Johansen's cointegration method and several other methods (such as SUR) for production and export have been used.The results show that variables of credits, investment stock and labor had positive and significant impacts on value added of agricultural sector. The results also revealed that variables of value added, real exchange rate and capital stock had positive and significant impacts on agricultural export sector. Research finding reveal that there is a positive relation between bank credits and agricultural export in this section.

The main objective of this article is to comparative study of diffusion, farm structure and integrated models regarding on farm sustainable water resources management adoption. The research design was a descriptive and correlation surveying method that has been used of Discriminant analysis. A random sample of wheat farmers selected from Ahwaz Township of Iran in 2008 (Population=1370, Sample=110).The results of the study indicated that different among age, education level, technical knowledge, income, crop yield, attitude and knowledge regarding sustainable water resources management based of adoption levels of farmers were significantly. In this study diffusion, farm structure and integrated models used to predicting adoption behavior of farmers. The findings indicated that the Discriminant model developed based on the integrated model is a better predictor for farmer’s adoption behavior than diffusion and farm structure model. Therefore, private and governmental agencies must emphasize application of integrated model in extension of sustainable water resources management.

In this study, factors discriminating low-waste from high-waste bakeries have been survey appling a discriminant analysis and sample of 131 bakeries in mashhad in 2008. The result indicated that direct surveillance, cost of flour, price of bread, time of fermentation, number of bakery convenience, quality of flour, experiment of baker and mean of personals income had significant and negative effects on the bakeries waste content. On the other hand, ration type of flour, type of bakeries personals activity and number of environs bakeries had significant and positive effects on the bakeries waste content. Results indicate that among factors related, type of bakeries personals activity, ration type of flour, cost of flour, experiment of baker and quality of flour are important factors in discriminating the two group bakeries. Finally, based on the conclusions, several policy-oriented recommendations were made.

Pistachio export, after hand-woven carpet, accounts for the highest share of non oil export revenue with more than 1 billion dollars. Iran has continually accounted for more than half of pistachios trade, however the prices has experienced a declining trend during two last decades. The objective of this study is to investigate the changes occurred in pistachio trade market structure and to analysis changes in market power of Iran. Regarding the changes happened in combination of the Iranian pistachio importing countries over last two decades, analysis were performed for 1989-1996 and 1997-2005 separately. The analysis instruments are demand function and market concentration indices. The findings showed that changes in combination of importing countries has resulted in decrees of Iranian market power from 0.66 to 0.36, causing a rise in foreign consumers surplus from 43 in 1989-1996 to more than 173 billion USDA in next period on average. However, the chance of experiencing market power remains for Iran. The concentration indices also showed an increasing trend of competition for pistachio market structure during last two decades. It was also found that pistachios trade market tends to perform as a closed monopoly. Based on the findings, Iran is proposed to find new markets, leading to decrease the buyers share.

Appropriate credit scoring assessment assists financial institutions on loan pricing, determining amount of loan, loan risk management, reduction of default risk and increase in debt repayment. The purpose of this study is to estimate a credit scoring model for the agricultural loans in Kohgiloye & Bovair Ahmad Province. The logistic regression with the two estimation methods (classic and Bayesian) are used to construct the credit scoring models as well as to predict the borrower’s creditworthiness and default risk. Furthermore, Bayesian method was compared with the classical estimation methods. The Limdep and MLwiN softwares are used to estimate models by Classic and Bayesian approaches, respectively. Data were collected from 110 farmers in Kohgiloye & Bovair Ahmad Province in 2007.Results of the Bayesian method indicated that variables such as education, value of assets and age of farmers have positive effects, whereas borrowing from others; loan type, total debet to assets ratio and the duration of bank-borrower relationship have negative effect as important factors in determining the creditworthiness of the borrowers. The results also show that a higher value of assets implies a higher creditworthiness and a higher probability of a good loan. However, the negative sign found on the duration of bank borrower relationship, which contradict with the hypothesized sign, suggest that the borrower who has a longer relationship with the bank has a higher probability to default on debt repaymen. The overall prediction accuracy of the Bayesian credit scoring models is 90.91% and 89.91% in-sample and out-of-sample forecast, respectively, and is higher than the classic model on out-of-sample forecast. Thus, when the expected loss of misclassification are computed and compared, the results indicate that the misclassification cost of the Bayesian method is the best credit scoring model with the lowest misclassification costs. In summary, the empirical results in this study support the use of the Bayesian method in classifying and screening agricultural loan applications.