STRATEGIC RESEARCH JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Year:2017 | Volume:2 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:7

Natural resources, as the basis of life and sustainable development, play vital role in creating job and securing beneficiaries livelihood. Hence natural resources preservation, development and rehabilitation should be prioritized. In this paper, probable consequences of targeted subsidies on the natural resources using analysis of statistics and data from the Ministries of Agricultural Jihad and Energy were analyzed for their positive and negative effects. Some of the positive consequences of the elimination of subsidies are reduced air, soil and water pollution due to reduced use of fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Also higher prices of water can affect patterns of urban and agricultural consumption of water and help to feed the groundwater and aquifers.Targeted subsidies can modify energy consumption patterns and strengthen trends toward producing renewable energy that play a major role in the sustainability of natural resorces. Negative consequences of targeting subsidies are increased prices of fuel, energy and animal forage which result in the plant and forest clearing. Also elimination of subsidy of agricultural production units results in negative consequences. Increased input prices of livestock and livestock production costs have increased reliance on natural resources and occupation these areas. It is recommended that before implementation of any law and policy to be is considered its consequences on all parts of the country and especially natural resources areas, particularly environmental sustainability, should be are analyzed and foreseen.

Recent global climate changes due to human activities on misuse of fossil energy, deforestation and greenhouse effects have caused global warming and environmental changes and consequently air pollution and unsustainability in agriculture. At present time, gas, oil and charcoal are the main sources of energy which their misuses are responsible partially to global warming and air pollution which must be reduced and replaced to some extend by renewable energy like wind power and solar energy. Use of renewable energy is environmentally safe, very low cost and accessible in remote rural and wild life locations to generate electricity and heat. This review updates the use of renewable energy emphasizing on solar energy in agriculture for soil disinfestations from pathogen, pests and weeds under field and greenhouse conditions. For economical application of renewable energy in sustainable agriculture there is great need on research and technology.

As a solution to cope with the occurring drought in most regions of the world and Iran, the pressurized irrigation systems have been extensively used. Due to feasibility of implementing these irrigation systems, an extensive pressure could be imposed on groundwater resources, which would be a real threat for sustainable groundwater withdrawal, and the goals of real water saving strategies in aquifers of watersheds will not be met. Analysis showed that it is possible to achieve high irrigation efficiency if the pressurized irrigation systems are correctly and technically designed based on the climate of the region and then installed and performed appropriately. It is realized that sprinkle irrigation systems might not be recommended in the warm and dry climate of Iran, and instead the localized irrigation systems are suggested and favorable over them. Nevertheless, it is necessary to adopt several fundamental management strategies to prevent the occurrence of rebound effect. Some of the main strategies that would potentially prevent rebound effect are including but not limited to restricting the expansion of cultivated areas, considerable increase of water price, volumetric delivery of water to farmers, changing cropping pattern that is combined with deficit irrigation strategies, crop improvement, and importing virtual water.

In recent years, greenhouses are developing in Iran because of a high productivity technology due to the possibility of controlling environmental factors for agricultural production such as temperature, prevention of frostbite and heat exhaustion phenomena, efficient use of water and soil resources, appropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides and off-season production. Generally, commercial greenhouses are used for high economical and physical production of ornamental plants, vegetables, and fruits. Proper location, type of structure, covering and equipment as well as management and operation are very important to achieve proper environmental conditions inside greenhouses. Some of the main issues of greenhouses in Iran are greenhouses size, geographic orientation, greenhouse height, improper ratio of height to width (H/W) and length to width (L/W), poor ventilation areas, location for ventilation systems, substandard materials and coverings, structural strength against environmental factors such as wind and snow loads, and depreciation of structures. This paper presents technical parameters analysis which required in greenhouse to achieve the minimum standards. Then based on a case study in three provinces include Khuzestan, Bushehr, and Fars, these parameters were investigated during 2014. The results showed greenhouses which were constructed in Khuzestan province generally are not standard and related engineering principles and indices are not considered properly. More than half of the studied greenhouse structures in Bushehr had weakness in structures. The structural and equipment differences which observed in the greenhouses of this province were low and not statistically significant. During last few years, nursery activities for exporting vegetables and fruits propagation to other provinces are expanding in Bushehr. These activities moderated the structural and equipment weakness in this province.The structural and equipment differences which observed in Fars province green houses were low and not statistically significant while weakness in technical indicators in about half of the greenhouses was evident due to climatic diversity in this province.

In the past two centuries people intentionally or unintentionally failed in being in harmony with environment and the principles of sustainable nature. This is mostly due to the advent of the industrial age and modernity having achieved the domination of natural phenomena and ecosystems, using the tools and thinking of reductionism or system. Current and future technologies and the so-called agricultural mechanization or automation has become common in recent years by applying different policies to increase competition for the exploitation and development of land for crop and horticulture production. Intensive cultivation, mismanagement of forests and other natural resources, intensive grazing etc, has led to environmental problems and deterioration of natural resources. Despite significant improvement in the areas of plant breeding, irrigation, pest control, soil fertility and the use of new technologies such as precision agriculture and biotechnology.Climate and soil are still the most important determinants of sustainable agricultural systems.Concepts such as sustainable agriculture, conservation agriculture, organic farming, precision farming and agricultural biotechnology are the result of such inappropriate policies. In this article, a brief history of the inception and use of agricultural machinery and mechanization are presented.The positive and negative aspects of machine operation with an emphasis on environmental aspects will be discussed. Also envisage of the future mechanization system management will be reviewed.

The Iranian rangeland stakeholders have special idea about rangeland problems. Dissimilarity of viewpoints in rangeland stakeholders is effective on decision making and planning. Having clear picture on similarity and dissimilarity between stakeholder's viewpoints is important to managers in action and decision making. In this research gathered idea of 4 groups of rangeland stakeholders (utilizers, experts and managers, scientists and researchers and co-operative and personal sections) on rangeland management system inefficiency. This study was carried out at regional level (Golestan and Khorasan provinces). Then, averaging of the stakeholders opinions presented at the public and private sections. The inefficiency of rangeland management system has been evaluated by three criteria economic-social, ecological and policy. The used tools were through questionnaires and interview that asked 186 rangeland stakeholders to rank. The sampling population was based on reputation analysis and selectively defined according to some criteria. The validity and reliability of questionnaires were approved by a panel of experts and calculating Cronbach alpha coefficient respectively. Data analyzed by Discriminant Analysis (DA) at STATISTICA software. Result showed that the private section believed that drought is the main problem while the public section believed that the outer-institutional topics are the main problems. So, there are specific different opinions that are important in planning and decision making processes.

In a research project in the I.R. Iran, Academy of Sciences, 200 Iranian scientific journals in 13 fields of agriculture and natural resources were qualitatively evaluated and scored. The journals were ranked “very high”, “high”, “medial”, “low” or “very low” on the basis of total score using a common statistical method. Accordingly, the distribution rank of the journals among the five above categories was as follows: very high, 5%; high, 27%; medial, 38.5%; low, 22% and very low, 7.5%.In addition to the total score, the journals were also ranked for five indices of “practical usefulness”, “necessity of publication”, and quality of their articles including “up-to-datedness”, “innovativeness”, and “scientific/applied merits”. The journals which attained a score equal or higher than mean plus 1 standard deviation were regarded as “high” ranking. The percentages of journals which ranked “high” by various indices were as follows: 10% in “practical usefulness”, 16.5 % in “necessity of publication”, 15% in “up-to-datedness”, 15.5% in “innovativeness”, and 14.5% in “scientific/applied merits”. Percentages of “high” journals in one or more indices were: 36.5% at least in one index, 20.5% in two indices, 10.5% in three indices, 3.5% in four indices and only 1.5% in all five indices. Thus, these indices, in addition to total score, may be considered when evaluating the journals for their scientific rank.