VILLAGE AND DEVELOPMENT
Year:2005 | Volume:8 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

A number of main issues has emerged from development status and the concerned infra structures in the process of area development in Iran, due to the unfavourable national and centralized plannings in recent years. Therefore, it has always been a matter of discussion how to make public investments within areas, and economic sectors and sub-sectors so as to achieve an equitable distribution as well as to decline present imbalances. Variety of aspects of the issue along with its structural complexity appears to be a crucial dilemma to provide an appropriate model for credit distributions. Identification and setting the levels of regions in terms of their advantage rates in social, cultural, and other aspects are assumed a primary step to solve problems caused by the regional imbalances. One of the most recent patterns offered in this field is the fuzzy logic method. This paper tends to determine the degrees of development in sub-districts of two counties named Aq-qala and Bandar-e Torkaman on the basis of the fuzzy logic method, using 49 indices of socio-cultural, economic, and physical development. The results indicate that although the studied sub-districts are almost homogeneous in environmental conditions, they have considerable differences in their levels of development; in addition, their levels of advantages in each one of the mentioned aspects are unequal to each other. The differences, anyhow, call for necessary provision and implementation of purposeful plans and programs to achieve an integrated balanced development of rural areas.

This research aims at reviewing educational needs of stock breeders for how to practise on artificial insemination of dairy cattle in Marand county. It has been carried out in a survey method and characterized by a descriptive correlation analysis. Statistical universe of the research consists of 150 cattle husbandries of the Marand county in 2004, and a statistical sample of 108 cattle husbandries were selected at random. For data collection a questionnaire was formulated in four categories, including: individual, social, and economic features; measuring technical knowledge; measuring extent of access to technical information; and measuring the attitudes. As shown by the results, almost 77 percent of the respondents apply the artificial insemination method in their cattle. Moreover, the farmers' technical knowledge of the practice appears to be at a medium level, indicating their educational needs in the following priorities: cross-breeding management, artificial insemination hygiene, identification of rutting period of cattle, and nutrition. An analysis of the relationship between independent and dependent variables reveals that-there is a positive significant relation between farmers' ages and experiences in stock breeding, and their educational needs, while the relation of their schooling level and technical knowledge with their educational needs is a negative significant one. As indicated by a multiple regression test, literacy simply determines 13.8 percent of variations in educational needs (R2= 0.138); it means that there might be plenty of factors affecting fluctuations in the extent of farmers' educational needs for the artificial insemination not yet identified in the present study.

Potato is one of products with too much fluctuations in price and production. As the most significant food of a high value after wheat and rice, it accounts for a main foodstuff of the people in third world countries and may quite well be an alternative for certain food products. Given the contribution of such a product in the economic development process, improved population nutrition, high incomes for producers, increased capital investment, and employment in production, industry and associated products as well as considering a growing increase in world population and a further more need for optimal use of products and productive inputs, it seems quite necessary to review demanded inputs in cropping potatoes and the concerned supply function. This study aims to estimate simultaneously the functions of profit, product supply and input demand as well as demand elasticity of production and supply inputs for potatoes in the cropping year of 2002-3. The study has drawn upon a normative translog cost function for the estimation of supply and demand functions for the potato inputs in the province of Khorasan; and in order to give a simultaneous estimation of this system of equations, it has made use of a seemingly unrelated regression model. The results indicate that the price elasticity of input demand give a negative sign, and chemical fertilizers and improved seeds show elasticity. Cross demand elasticities show a complementary relation between fertilizers and machinery, and fertilizers and labor force as well as a substitution relation between labor force and improved seeds. Moreover, the input demand elasticities to the yield prices are positive, and yield supply elasticities to the input prices are negative and greater than one, with the exception of the improved seeds, indicating a high sensitivity of potato cultivators to the price fluctuations.

Following a fifty-year period of production in collective farms, countries in Eastern Europe have made a significant progress in privatization of means of production ownership. However, scattered small lands, unexpectedly emerged from land reform itself, turned out to be a serious obstacle to sustainable development of agriculture sector in these countries. Most of the modern thoughts on land consolidation have generally been realized in large-scale by external and governmental institutions, though failed to succeed in sustainable achievements. As a result, a number of local groups have spontaneously been formed to control various dimensions of the scattered agricultural lands. The present paper has come out of exploring experimental and theoretical studies aiming at the illustration of discussions related to the land consolidation which is presented within an integrated approach based on a comprehensive understanding of rural operators' real life contexts and produced experiences. The paper reviews systematically the concept, importance and dimensions of land consolidation as a crucial need for a sustainable agricultural development. It also studies various natures of the scattered lands and the implications for the rural operators according to the existing evidence. It continues then with the explanation of such issues as  basic principles, general requirements, implementation trend of the concerned projects, and challenges as well as practices known by the experiences of certain East European countries; and finally, some recommendations are made to perform a successful land consolidation in Iran with respect to the existing conditions of the country.

Today, as importance of innovation in process of development and transfer of agricultural technologies is constantly increasing, institutional agents of agricultural research, training and extension try to provide a flexible framework for a further participation of their clients. Therefore, they tend to focus on formulating and developing approaches in which the agricultural development and extension actors as facilitators are assumed to accompany farmers and rural groups in order to produce, adapt, develop, and apply the knowledge and technologies appropriate to local conditions. "Farmer Field School" and "Promoting Farmer Innovation" approaches have been developed for the same purpose. In these approaches, a main concern is an explanation of sustainable resource management in the agriculture sector to provide food security and sustainable subsistence, and a fundamental function includes an increase in capacity of farmers and rural communities to achieve a balanced development in sustainable productivity and management domain of agricultural resources, emphasizing on pragmatic participatory approaches. This paper is presented to introduce basics, principles, structural-functional features, and role of these two approaches in drawing upon the farmers' innovations to transfer the appropriate and adaptable technologies in the context of sustainable agricultural development.