Investigation and analysis of the factors inhibiting the development of agriculture in rural areas (Khandab city - Central province)

Dissertation to obtain a doctorate degree

Department of Geography and Rural Planning

Dissertation/dissertation abstract:

The development of the agricultural sector in rural areas is based on the existence of natural talents and the realization of planning goals to establish development facilities and requirements. This is despite the fact that some rural settlements have high natural and ecological potentials, we see the lack of development of the agricultural sector in these areas. The technique used to conduct the present research is documentary and survey method (field-interview questionnaire). The research sample consists of 370 agricultural operators in 25 rural settlements of Khandab city and 18 researchers and academic experts. The results obtained from the Shannon entropy method show that the level of agricultural development with an average of 0.030 is lower than the expected ideal level. The natural power level of the region is based on the Likert scale of 3.64, which is higher than the theoretical average of 3. The average desirability of the government's behavioral model in the agricultural development planning environment is 1.80 on the Likert scale, which is at a lower level than the theoretical average of the research. The effect of such behavior can be seen in the average of 0.019 indicators for determining the performance of agricultural development planning. In the meantime, the components of infrastructure facilities, education and promotion and attracting capital from operating banks have been connected with the level of agricultural development with correlation coefficients of 0.491, 0.670 and 0.438, respectively, and a significance level lower than 0.05. The importance of the weights of the indicators of price regulation of the agricultural products market in the villages of Khandab city with an average of 0.011 shows the unfavorable situation of this dimension. Meanwhile, the importance of market price regulation indicators on the level of agricultural development is the same. Finally, the results of the artificial neural network technique show the superiority of natural factors over the institutional factors of the government in influencing the amount of agricultural development with sensitivity coefficients of 0.99 and 0.84.

Keyword: Natural factors, government institutional factors, investment in the production process, market regulation, agricultural development, Khandab city

Foreword

Undoubtedly, the dominant nature of the economic environment of rural areas is dedicated to agricultural activity. Therefore, the agricultural sector plays a major role in providing sustainable livelihood and rural employment. In addition, the agricultural sector is considered as one of the economic levers of the country's development at the national level and has an important share of the national gross product and capital accumulation. Today, the agricultural sector is facing many challenges and problems, and the functioning of the sector is such that it is not able to reflect the positive economic effects in the structure of rural communities and generate stable income for the users, and it does not have the necessary efficiency. Lack of infrastructure and public facilities, lack of diffusion of innovation and new technologies, inappropriate water efficiency, lack of education and promotion mechanism, inefficiency of agricultural land structure, lack of capital and vacuum of marketing and marketing system have lowered the profitability of the agricultural sector and caused its inefficiency. On the other hand, the problems of setting market price arrangements, such as; The incomplete structure of the market, the lack of trustees, the lack of a market information system, the lack of use of appropriate technology and the lack of participation of producers in marketing have caused farmers to not be able to receive real wages for their labor and to have bargaining power in the product supply market.

The depth of the challenges of the agricultural sector is more than related to the lack and gaps in the field of production and supply of agricultural products.

The depth of the challenges of the agricultural sector is more related to the diminishing position of the village and the agricultural sector in the approach of the national development planning system, than it is related to the deficiency and gaps in the field of production and supply of agricultural products, which is manifested in the failure to create a balanced function between the economic sectors (industry, agriculture and services), attention to the special ability of the agricultural sector as the basis of mobility and the development of other economic sectors of the country (industry and services), the unfair allocation of facilities and development requirements between different economic sectors in the country (industry, agriculture and services), not considering the agricultural sector as a way of life and not production and taking into account human and environmental functions, lack of a clear definition of the concept, dimensions and characteristics of agricultural development in the country's planning system, lack of a valid statistical and information system to ensure the results of agricultural development planning, non-expert and scientific approach to the goals and management methods of the agricultural planning system, non-compliance of the budget and credit system with the content of the approved programs in the field of agricultural development planning, not respecting the producer's rights The lack of desire to implement scientific principles in the field of agricultural policymaking and the lack of attention to the efficiency and effectiveness of the policies adopted in the agricultural sector has been reflected to the consumer in the formulation and design of agricultural policies.

In this connection, the specific formulation of the political economy of Iran clearly exposes the role of the state-oriented political economy in the process of agricultural development, a role that is undoubtedly one of the main factors that encourage and promote oil and the political economy that relies on oil. is In fact, one of the important and decisive variables that has played a major role in strengthening and intensifying the refusal direction of the political economy against the agricultural sector in Iran has been oil and the free and impressive incomes resulting from it. With the discovery of oil in Iran, in the early 20th century, the government gradually obtained a precious reserve, which by relying on the rich revenues from it, it could provide the financial resources needed to expand the range of its control and interference in various aspects of economic and social life, and the fields of the emergence and emergence of the economic effects of the production sectors at the national and local levels.

Also, agriculture is heavily influenced by natural variables. And it is biological and ecological irregularities such as; Unsuitable conditions of water and soil, climate changes and biological disorders hinder the growth and development of the sector. According to the aforementioned theoretical model and considering the problems facing agricultural development in the villages of Khandab city, this thesis is compiled in five chapters, the content of each chapter is mentioned below separately. In general, it deals with the research plan and designs the whole thesis.

The second chapter refers to the intellectual foundations of the research and is divided into two parts, concepts and theoretical framework. In the concepts section, the definition of agricultural development and the related inhibiting dimensions have been discussed in terms of the researcher's intellectual framework. The theoretical framework section deals with the theoretical basis of the factors hindering the development of agriculture in the form of government theories (social choice) and with the theoretical expansion of the rentier government and the political economy of the oil base of the country, the main factors of the weakness of agriculture have been rooted, based on which the research assumptions have been generalized and the analytical model has been drawn based on them. The third chapter has introduced the region. The main content of this chapter is dedicated to the things that are necessary in the research process and have a decisive role in the research results. In this chapter, the situational, natural, demographic, economic and service characteristics of the studied area are mentioned.

The fourth chapter is compiled in two parts. The first part deals with the description and analysis of the research data and the second part refers to the testing of the research hypotheses. And finally, the fifth chapter, which is the extract and the main part of the research, deals with the conclusions and suggestions of the research. According to the latest official report of the Iranian Statistics Center on the area under cultivation of agricultural products, about 86% of the irrigated land, 85% of the rainfed land and 78% of the existing orchards and fields belong to the farmers. Therefore, the basis of agricultural activities is the geographical environment and space called rural space (Taghdisi and Bashaq, 1389: 1) and it plays an important role in the economy and provision of rural employment. In addition, Iran's agricultural sector is one of the most important and powerful economic sectors of the country. which supplies more than a quarter of the gross national product, a quarter of employment, more than four fifths of food needs, a quarter of non-oil exports and about nine tenths of the needs of industries for agricultural products (Nik P, 2019: 30). Despite the positive role of the agricultural sector in the growth and development of the national and local economy, current realities show the weakness of the production-based economy and the stagnation of the agricultural sector in rural areas. In general, the productivity per capita in the agricultural sector is lower than in other sectors, and the yield of most products is far from the average of developed countries (Researcher Kajidi, 1375:52).