STRATEGIC RESEARCH JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Year:2017 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:6

The range, grass and/or grazing lands are the most important, extensive, useful and beautiful God given resource not only at the disposal and the uses of the human beings but also, at the disposal and the uses of the other living creatures all over the land sphere. Since it is as such, then inevitably, the range spaces are exposed to the most dangerous natural damages and afflictions, as well as to the human and non-human events, occurrences and incidents. This phenomenon and characteristic as well as the conditions accompany it in respect to the existence of the rangelands, more or less in any territory from the beginning of life along with the time till now, had been running as such. As a result, especially in recent centuries, the human beings had been watching the gradual, but continuing death of enormous, beneficial, pure and abundant natural grasslands. As far as numerous witnesses approve the story that the gradual death of the grasslands in many parts of the world, had been followed by continuous disaster of droughts, still followed by the destruction of the subsistence sites on the earth globe and consequently, the fall of human civilization in other parts of the earth. Now, considering the necessity of the grasslands sustainable management, as one of the most outstanding bio-resources for all of the living creatures all over the land sphere. The goal of this article was to plan extension educational strategies for the sustainable process of maintaining, revival, development and exploitation of the country’s grasslands. For this purpose, while doing the library searches, the basic researches for this article, had taken place on the bases of clinical surveys through observations, meetings and interviews with individuals and groups involved in exploitation and maintenance of the grasslands in the territories of the counties and villages’ as well as in pasturelands resorts and also in the country’ institutions and organizations involved. The findings which were based on the experiments and studies relying on “natural –pivoted development”, indicate the reality that ahead of any move in the process of maintaining, revival, development and exploitation of the country’s grasslands, it is necessary to plan extension educational strategies to start with. In this relation, this article contains a review of the literature on the philosophy, principles, objectives (as the pillars or the essential elements) as well as the strategies regarding the School of Extension Education, which is briefly discussed in the appendix.In completing the role of these essential elements, after explaining the extension teaching methods, the addressed groups including local and technical leaders, traditional know-how men and professional shepherds (the rural as well as the tribe) and also the needed training workshops, and the other necessary methods to train general volunteer rural and tribal animal keepers, had been mentioned. These teaching and training methods had been defined and introduced in the meantime, at the end of the article. Also in addition to some recommendations, reference is made to some training motives and incentives in order to attract the training objective groups, as well as to evaluate the basis of the effectiveness of the extension training activities regarding the extension educational management in range sustainable exploitation.

It has been estimated that the population of Iran in 2025 and 2050 will reach to 90 and 115 millions, respectively. World population in the same years will be about 7.7 and 9 billions.Agronomists agree that, using today’s tools of production, food shortage in the world in 2050 will be about one third of the needs of that time. Thus, suitable technologies must be used to confront food shortage for the increasing population. Such technologies include: reducing food wastes, change in people’s feeding habit, appropriate population growth, increase in production of agricultural lands by using high yielding seeds and better soil and water management methods, meat and milk yields increase in unit of area using sustainable management procedures, increase in sea fish population sources, and using aquaculture production techniques. All of these must be done in a manner to increase yield per hectare, and decrease their negative impacts on climate and ecosystems. In this way, crop producers will be urged to reduce agricultural input and meanwhile to make more effort to reach sustainability by increasing water and fertilization efficiency, soil quality in terms of carbon and nutrient, reducing insect pests and pathogens damages and greenhouse gas control. Procedures and policies to be considered in this way are environmental, climatic and natural resources conservation, confronting negative impacts of flood, drought and frost, soil and water preservation measures, precision agriculture and use of special tools and machinery, photosynthetic and net conversion efficiency to intercept solar energy into more biomass, increasing plant-environment ecological relations, use of agricultural biotechnology and genetic engineering, biodiversity control, and breeding for higher yield and bio fortification.

Due to overuse of fossil fuels in the world, the idea of renewable energy production, especially biofuels has been popular. On the other hand, production of bio-ethanol is one of the 15 potential technologies for sustainable atmospheric CO2 production in 2054. However, the following strategic questions should be answered: 1- Should the crop residues be used for increasing the soil organic matter, soil quality and improvement of ecosystem or for energy production? 2- Should the short term positive economic benefits be preferred to the long term sustainable use of natural resources? 3- Should the need of fuel be preferred to the food security in the world? Responses to these questions are related to the point that more land and water resources should be devoted to produce bio-energy plants. Raw materials for bio-ethanol production are: Sugar rich crops (sugarcane and sugar beet), starch crops (wheat, maize and potato), and cellolusic materials (crop residues, wheat straw, rice straw, maize stover and woods). However, use of sugar rich and starch materials resulted in food-fuel competition that resulted in raising the food price in the world. To confront with this problem, the following questions should be considered: 1- Which crops should be planted for bio-ethanol production? 2- Where these crops should be planted? 3- How these crops should be cultivated for sustainable bio-ethanol production? Cellolusic energy crops that produce high biomass in soils with low fertility, water stress and saline conditions and are tolerant to pests and diseases are suitable choice. Energy use in agricultural sector in Iran is about 4% of the total energy use, on the other hand, there is organic matter deficit in soils, scarcity in water resources and forage in Iran. Therefore, using solid waste, forage or sugar rich and starch crops for bio-gas, electrical energy or bio-ethanol production is not acceptable. Whereas, natural gas or other renewable energy like solar, wind or nuclear energy can be used for electricity production.

Rangelands are one of the most important and valuable national resources, that their proper utilization with improvement and restoration has fundamental role to maintain soil, water and supply needs of protein products for people. For proper management of rangeland ecosystems, all of the factors affecting these ecosystems should be understood and comprehensively analyzed theoretically and managed. The system reaches the sustainability when it has a balance between its inputs and outputs. Inputs of ecosystems are effective environmental factors, grazing and other human activities. Regarding the diversity of environmental conditions in the country's rangelands, the quality and effective factors affecting the sustainability will be different. This paper offers a conceptual model for the sustainable management of rangeland ecosystems of the country and environmental factors affecting the sustainability will be analyzed by the framework of a dynamic system. The environmental factors affecting the sustainability of rangeland ecosystems are wet and drought conditions, soil erosion, utilization of vegetation cover and rangeland management and modification. To achieve sustainability of rangeland ecosystems, all factors and their interactions should be recognized, and management tools should be designed according to the conditions governing the rangeland ecosystems.

Current water management will soon result in the drying crisis of the Urmia Lake, an internationally registered hyper-saline wetland, in Iran. The most priority is an action plan to deliver in-basin surface waters into the lake. The main aim of the present paper is to introduce the scientific and technical methods to supply and deliver water from the ten major rivers around the lake, in the order of 20 to 40% of potential annual flows from these rivers. The revision of the current water allocation for agricultural uses, emergency plan to reduce 40% of irrigation water, to lease farmers ‘water-rights, to prevent illegal water intakes from the rivers, to release 30 to 40% of reserved water from 13 large dams around the lake, and to perform river improvement works to facilitate water delivery are necessary for saving the Urmia Lake. Long life and sustainable solution is to increase the rivers environmental flow allocations from existing 10% to 20% to 40% of their potential annual flows. The change in the volume of water regulation in the 13 operating dams, and the reduction of possible storage of water in the 11 under-construction dams are to be considered for the future restoration of the Urmia Lake.

Although consequence of the recent outbreak of shigellosis in Isfahan and Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari provinces in terms of number of people who suffered from the disease was limited, this outbreak has not led to any deaths, but has inducted huge problems to the country’s health system, disrupted the society’s psychological security and created difficulties for parts of the society. A look at America’s Science Academy manifest issued in 2001 which has emphasized that millions of people are suffering from such contagious diseases, thousands are dying even in communities with high levels of health care as a result of consuming contaminated foods. Therefore, serious consideration towards the issue should be taken. Great changes in people’s life styles and its accelerated progress, the emergence of widespread climate and environmental changes and high remedy costs, demand great and profound attention the “prevention, better than treatment” motto, a matter that if neglected, the issue may lead to irreparable consequences. Fruits and vegetables play an important role in health maintenance and human life style betterment. Everyday consumption of fruits and vegetables can have positive effects on the prevention of disease outbreak. Fruits and vegetables are originated from different parts of the plants (leaves, roots, tubers, fruits and flowers).Plants growing conditions and its edible parts locality, harvest and preservation conditions, transportation and finally processing procedures can affect the product’s microbial status. Microbial quality and the contamination degree of water in use are also of importance. Alongside, giving attention to sprouted seeds is significant due to the fact that during the sprouting process, the plant’s protecting crust goes aside and the seed itself is exposed to microbial attacks. On the other hand, widespread food supply has led to fruits and vegetables being shipped from the furthest places worldwide, so obviously some consequences of this phenomenon becoming pervasive should be of attention. In most countries, fruits and vegetables have played role in the start and outbreak of foodborne diseases. These outbreaks are different by means of population size and differ from a few to thousands of people. The current article reviews the cases of outbreaks mostly reported in Iran, while a number of important cases all over the world have also been referred.