Rural Development Strategies
Year:2014 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

Cultivation of the strategic crop of rice highly depends to the existence of sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water, and water shortage stresses have irreparable effects on yield and quality of productions. Decrease of the Sefidrud river inflow in Guilan province which is the main source of supplying irrigation water for 171 thousand hectares under rice cropping area of this province, has been challenged sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water supply in many regions of mentioned province. Hence, in present study estimating the value that paddy farmers place on sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water supply has been considered. Economic valuation of sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water supply improves water resource management policies in demand side. Requested data set were obtained on the base of a survey and are collected from 224 paddy farms in rural regions that faced with irrigation water shortages. Then, using open-ended valuation approach and estimation of Tobit model via ML and two stages Heckman approach, eliciting paddy farmers' willingness to pay for sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water supply has been accomplished. Results revealed that farmers in investigated regions willing to pay 26.49 percent more than present costs of providing irrigation water in order to have sufficient and guaranteed irrigation water.

According to TAVANIR company`s statistics, despite fulfilling the electricity supply plans to the villages with more than 20 families in rural areas of Iran, Still, more than 17, 000 rural families in villages, with populations less than 20 families, are deprived from accessing to the electricity. Production Losses, transmission and distribution of electricity and the distribution of the population cause use of solar energy in remote areas. Hence, photovoltaic systems, because of direct conversion of solar energy into electricity without the need for sophisticated equipment are important. In this paper, an economic evaluation of Off Grid photovoltaic systems against national power grid has been studied in Tehran villages, due to the uncertainty in modeling; Monte Carlo simulation with 2000 iterations was used. We did Economic evaluation, using the life cycle cost of a photovoltaic system for a period of 25 to 30 years as well as the development costs for the power grid to remote villages. The paper shows the minimum distance of the village distribution network that the photovoltaic system is more economical than the national power grid development. This distance has inverse relation with discount rate as well as direct relation with the number of cloudy days and the number of rural families.

This paper has calculated some of the most important indexes of social welfare, changes and income inequality including, Gini coefficient, docile ratio, Engel coefficient, social welfare, household real costs per capita, gap between urban and rural consumption and poverty line in the rural areas, using cost statistics and income household during 2005-2011. The research findings show that income inequality based on calculated indexes has fluctuations both in the rural areas of the country and north Khorasan Province but reduced considerably in 2011. North Khorasan Province shows unequal income distribution during the studied period compared to the country. Also the results reveal that social welfare indexes in the rural areas, have had a descending trend both in north Khorasan Province and in the country, but rural areas of north Khorasan Province have been in the worse situation. Furthermore poverty line has had an ascending trend which one of the main reasons of this increase has been the high rate of inflation.

Regarding the current situation of the country and importance role of the rural community in balanced development and also due to the problems and issues which this society is facing to, rural sustainable development seems necessary. This study aims to investigate agricultural sustainability development as a case study in Kashmar village and classifies villages in three sustainable, unsustainable and semi sustainable. Statistics and information were collected from the department of agriculture and data collected by 187 questionnaires from farmers and 14 questionnaires from experts 2008-9 and 2012-13. In order to assess the sustainability, economic, social and environmental indicators have been used. Calculating indicators and giving weight to each indicator, agreement programming approach was used to classify villages in each rural district. The results showed that during the studied period, sustainable development indicators have been improved in villages and rural areas have proceeded to the world sustainable development.

Promotion in rural tourism, based on sustainable tourism development and using tourism as the economic engine of the region to improve life quality, is one of the most important issues that needs to apply appropriate and rational strategies, fit to the regional and local capabilities and the direction of spatial analysis. This study aims to explore strategies of rural tourism development in the Gaykan village, which is one of the target tourism villages in Aligoodarz County. The research method is descriptive- analytical which uses questionnaire to collect data. Sample data were about 184 people in the geographical area. Cochran formula was used to estimate the number of sample data. Sampling method is random and stratified sampling. In order to analysis and prioritize tourism development strategies, we used SWOT analysis model. The results show that, considering the evaluation of internal and external factors, Invasive strategy (max - max) has been identified as an optimal strategy towards achieving tourism development in Gaykan village.

Access and use of sustainable asset can improve farmer economics status and farmers livelihood affected by capitals quantity and balance between these capitals. The main purpose of this descriptive-conductive research was to analysis sustainability asset in paddy systems of Rasht city. Statistical population of this research contained of all paddy farmers of Rasht township in 1392 (N=84772), where sample size determines by Krejcie and Morgan sample size (n=401). The questionnaire included 42 indicators and 13 components for five sustainable livelihoods capitals (physical, human, social, financial and natural). Content and face validity of research tool was obtained by a panel of experts. In order to obtain reliability of questionnaire, Coder- Richardson was used (0.96). The results show that human capital has highest level among five sustainable capitals. Physical capital, social capital, financial capital and natural capital ranked in order. Total component indicators for physical, human, financial, social and natural capitals calculated 1.03, 1.361, 0.866 and 0.8, respectively. This results show that improve in current capitals of rural areas would help to sustainability of paddy cultivation systems.

The decision to apply soil and water conservation practices by farmers is a multi-stage decision making process that has been linked to conditions and factors variety. The aim of this descriptive–analytical study is to investigate and assess farmers’ behavioral factors affecting the use of tillage conservation practices in the Shabab County. All farmers living in Shabab county who have attempted to cultivated wheat in year 2012-2011 were the population of this study, from that 187 people selected using Cochran formula and random sampling. Data collected using questionnaire that its validity and reliability was obtained through performing a pre-test using 30 questionnaires. The results show that wheat farmers can be classified into four groups based on the behavioral scores. These four groups are traditional farmers (18.39 percent), moderately traditional (26.98 percent), the mutable farmers (20.54 percent) and competent farmers (13.3 percent). The diagnostic analysis results indicate that variables such as farmer’s age, the rate of ownership of land, the percentage of household income from agriculture and a new taking morale, predict the behavioral class of farmers better than other alternatives.

Domestic fuel forms a significant part of the total energy demand and providing adequate and sustainable fuel is considered as a pivotal foundation for development. This survey study aims at investigating domestic fuel consumption patterns of rural areas in central district of Zahedan County, Eastern Iran. The sample was consisted of 250 household heads resided in rural areas with more than 25 households. The validity of questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of experts and its reliability was measured by using a pilot study. Findings revealed that, only 43 percent (n=102 household) revealed an efficient energy use behavior. The efficient energy consumers were significantly different with respect to their education level, age, income, and the other household characteristics. Results from the structural equation modeling which was used to confirm adequacy of the reasoned action model of fuel consumption behavior, showed that 0.24 percent of fuel consumption behavior was determined by attitude, intention and subjective norms towards fuel consumption. The paper presented applied suggestions regarding fuel consumption with special consideration on health and ecosystem and indoor sanitation issues.