Journal of Agricultural Economics and Development
Year:2020 | Volume:28 | Issue:110|Papers Count:10

Agricultural insurance is a good alternative of stabilizing producers'' incomes, but problems such as asymmetric information have made insurance an expensive tool. Recent studies have shown that weather index insurance manage these problems. Rainfall values have the greatest impact on agricultural production, compared to other climatic factors. On the other hand, Hashtroud County has a central position in wheat and barley production in in East Azerbaijan province of Iran. Therefore, in this study, the pricing of rainfall index insurance for wheat and barley in this county was investigated. In this regard, the required data of wheat and barley yield and rainfall during 1991-2015 were collected. The results of indemnity function showed that in the cropping years of 1999-2000 and 2007-08 with the annual rainfall of less than 225 mm, the indemnity was fully paid, equal to the maximum level of the insurer''s liability. Then, using the lost-cost function and log-logistic theoretical distribution, the premium rate was calculated to be 18 percent. Actual premiums were calculated at four levels of coverage and for each product, the calculated amount for wheat for the cropping year 2014-15 at the coverage level of 80 percent was 2568641 IR Rials and for the barley, equal to 2410948. 1 IR Rials. The results showed that the premiums calculated in this study for both products were higher than current premiums. Therefore, it might be suggested that the concerned premiums calculated to reduce the inefficiency of the Agricultural Insurance Fund should be taken into consideration by policy makers and managers of agricultural sector.

This study aimed at exploring the spatial effects of agricultural sustainability on food security of urban households in Iran over the period of 2005-15. For this purpose, first, the overall level of agricultural sustainability was calculated using a combination of agricultural sustainability and weighting indicators based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Then, the household food security index (AHFSI) was used to determine the food security of households in urban areas. Finally, the effectiveness of agricultural sustainability on food security of urban households while other effective factors in place was examined using the mixed Spatial Autoregressive (SAR) model. The results of the model indicated a positive and significant effect of agricultural sustainability on food security in urban households, and the significance of the dependent spatial interruption coefficient confirmed the existence of spatial effects. So, the results of calculating the direct and indirect effects of agricultural sustainability index on the food security of each province and neighboring provinces were positive and significant. These results indicated the intra-and inter-provincial overflows. Therefore, it is imperative for policymakers of the agricultural sector to invest in production infrastructure such as seeds, fertilizers and agricultural practices with a focus on enhancing sustainable production as a prerequisite for the establishment of sustainable food security.

Rice is a strategic crop with a strong presence in Iranian household food basket. This study aimed at investigating the consumers' preferences for rice using the choice experiment method and conditional logit model in Rasht city of Iran. The required data were collected through the 149 questionnaires completed from households in 2016. Six attributes of rice and their related levels were considered to describe the changes in rice, including size of rice grain, types of rice packaging, taste of rice, rice producing country, food safety and price attribute. The study results indicated that consumers had the most willingness to pay for local rice, so that each household in Rasht city was willing to pay 61000 IR rials per kg for the local rice. Accordingly, improving the level of education and enhancing the public awareness and knowledge of the rice attributes through the media (particularly, information on organic products and their benefits, the consequences of the use of fertilizers and chemical pesticides as well as the consumption consequences of imported rice) may contribute to support the organic and local rice while to meeting the demand and consumer preferences as well.

Among the sources of production growth, export is the major component strongly influenced by government policies. This study aimed mainly at investigating the effect of export composition change (ie the commodities’ export share over times) on the growth of agricultural production using the structural decomposition analysis method. For this purpose, firstly, the growth of production was decomposed into four main factors including the effect of change in domestic final demand, the effect of change in exports, the effect of technology change and the effect of import substitution. Then, the effects of change in exports were also subjected to further decomposition to determine the effect of the export composition change on production growth in more details. This operation was performed using input-output tables of 1991 and 2001 which were deflated. According to the results, the change in exports had a positive effect on the production growth of all the agricultural sub-sectors, except for livestock and poultry products. In addition, decomposing the effect of exports showed that the growth of crops, horticulture, fish and other aquaculture products was mostly influenced by increasing their own exports. However, in the case of livestock and poultry sector, the negative effect of decline in exports of food products and beverages caused to reduce the growth of this sector. These results suggested that to increase the agricultural production, in addition to the importance of an increase in the exports of agricultural raw materials, investment in the development of food industry to process high-quality products characterized by competitiveness in the world markets might be a major driver of growth in the agricultural raw products.

Water and soil conversation is one of the most important issues in agriculture and food production. It is necessary to identify the limitations and barriers to the development of water and soil conservation technologies and to address them and achieve development goals through enhancing the adoption rate of these technologies by farmers. This study aimed at investigating the measures of soil and water conservation at the farm level as well as determining the factors influencing the adoption of these technologies. For this purpose, the factors affecting farmers' intentions in applying the water and soil conservation technologies and activities were analyzed through the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the path analysis technique. The model of path analysis technique confirmed the effects of attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on the farmer's intention, and also showed that in addition to the obvious variables, some invisible variables had also such significant effects on the farmers’ adoption, which caused overlaps. According to the results, the variable of farmer's attitude had the most significantly positive effect on farmers' intentions in the water and soil conservation activities. Then, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms had significantly positive effects on the intention of the farmer to apply the water and soil conservation technologies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of pomegranate growers in Khash County using two methods of data envelopment analysis and super-efficiency analysis. The required information was collected by completing a questionnaire from pomegranate growers in Khash County. The results of this study showed that the average level of technical efficiency in the Khash County in the model assuming constant return to the scale is 0. 46 and in the model variable returns to the scale is 0. 68 and there is a clear difference in the level of technical efficiency between the studied gardens. The most important reason is the inefficiency in how to manage the use of inputs. The range of efficiency levels in the Super-Efficiency Model was between 0. 08 to 6. 86%, which shows a great difference between pomegranate gardens in terms of input consumption. The results of ranking pomegranate gardens using the Super-Efficiency approach with input-oriented assumption showed that the ranking of inefficient gardens is similar to data envelopment analysis. Therefore, it is recommended to increase and improve the efficiency of pomegranate producers by proper management and optimal allocation of inputs used in the pomegranate production process and the support of relevant agencies.

The present research carried out with the practical purpose of analyzing the requirements of overseas cultivation realization for improvement of food security in Iran. In methodology, this research is analytic non-experimental and it is based on surveys. The statistical population of the present research includes 176 researchers and experts who selected theoretically (N=176). Library documents have been the instrument used in the present research and five options for the Likert Spectrum Questionnaires have been applied in the field methodology. In this research, improvement of food security is the dependent variable which has been surveyed from the four aspects of food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food sustainability. It considers requirements of the realization of overseas cultivation as the independent variable. These requirements are the four categories of: policy-making; economic; socio-cultural; and agronomic-specialized. For descriptive analysis, the SPSS20 software has been used. Also, the deductive analysis has been carried out through the use of AMOS22 software and based on Classic Structural Equation Modeling method. The finding in the descriptive statistics sector indicates that more than 50 percent of them have a master degree and 48 percent of them studied agricultural sciences. The most important finding of this study in the inferential statistics shows that four requirements categories of policy-making; economic; socio-cultural; and agronomic-specialized have positive and meaningful effects on the food security development dimensions, which include food availability, food accessibility, food utilization and sustainability. And overseas cultivation realization for Iran has positive effect on food security improvement in the country.

Trade agreements are generally effective in reducing barriers to trade by reducing trade costs and increasing the contracts safety. Iran is in two trade agreements of the world, Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) and Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Despite the general belief that the presence in trade agreements generally has a positive effect on the trading flow of the countries, there is no guarantee about this effect in all countries and goods. Therefore, considering the importance of pistachio exports to Iran, this study aims to answer the question whether Iran’ s presence in trade agreements has increased exports of Iranian pistachio? To achieve the purpose, the gravity model and pistachios export data have been used during the period 2001 to 2016. Based on the results, Iran’ s membership in the trade agreements has had a positive and statistically significant impact (0. 380) on Iranian pistachio exports. Therefore, it is suggested that pistachio exports companies benefit from the opportunities provided by participating in these trade agreements to adopt appropriate marketing policies and strategies to increase Iran’ s pistachio exports to its trading partners.

In order to compare the effect of the policy of reducing water extraction from groundwater resources with the policy of increasing irrigation efficiency, on the deficit of groundwater reservoirs, production, net imports, net social benefits and farmers' income in Khorasan Razavi province, five cities including Mashhad, Sabzevar, Neyshabur, Torbat-e Jam and Torbat-e Heydarieh were selected and the effects of these policies were studied using a positive mathematical programming model (PMP_GME). The study of the effect of reducing water extraction showed that although this policy can balance the water extraction and reduce energy consumption by up to 25%, it reduces the production of important crops such as wheat and increases social costs, in particular, reducing farm incomes and increasing imports. So that it will increase social costs by 20-43 percent, and the cost of each cubic meter of saved water will be between 4540 and 6360 Rials. Replacing new systems instead of old at the potential level without increasing the area under cultivation, will reduce the tank's deficit by 94%. Although the closure of unauthorized wells is a legal requirement, its implementation cannot create balance in the water extraction. In order to achieve the desired result, it is necessary to close the unauthorized wells and reduce water extraction permanently from the wells that have a butterfly. Also by providing bank loans and advisory services, farmers helped to increase irrigation efficiency.

Survey of revealed preferences of Iranian citizens for sugar and lump Mohammad Reza Kohansal and Elahe Azam Rahmati Abstract The high proportion of sugar and lump of sugar of energy’ s consumption shows that many Iranian households are extremely dependent on these products in their food bundle. Therefore, recognizing consumer preferences for the types of products is very important for policy making and planning. In this study, it was investigated the structural changes in consumer preferences between (2007)-(2017) years. To achieve the goal non-parametric approaches is used that is based on Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP). The results of nonparametric approach indicated that there is an inconsistency in the WARP matrix in years of 2010, 2011 and 2012. The assumption of the reliability of consumer preferences has been violated in these years, which an important reason for it is increasing tariffs of imported sugar. JEL Classification: D11 Keywords: Preferences, Sugar, lump of sugar, WARP matrix.