Z. Nematollahi; S.M. Mojaverian; M. Hosseinzadeh
Abstract
Introduction: Attention to rural development than urban development in the third world not because of the majority of the population in rural areas, but also because it is the final solution to the problem of urban unemployment and decreasing the population density metropolis, development and improvement ...
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Introduction: Attention to rural development than urban development in the third world not because of the majority of the population in rural areas, but also because it is the final solution to the problem of urban unemployment and decreasing the population density metropolis, development and improvement of the rural environment. Rural tourism potentially can be considered as fundamental approaches in sustainable rural development. This study, using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is trying to prioritize the factors that affecting rural tourism in Mazandaran province whit scientific and practical point of view, then the best rural areas of the province identify and rank according to experts.
Materials and Methods: The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), introduced by Thomas Saaty (1980), is an effective tool for dealing with complex decision making and may aid the decision maker to set priorities and make the best decision. By reducing complex decisions to a series of pairwise comparisons, and then synthesizing the results, the AHP helps to capture both subjective and objective aspects of a decision. In addition, the AHP incorporates a useful technique for checking the consistency of the decision maker’s evaluations, thus reducing the bias in the decision-making process. The AHP can be implemented in three simple consecutive steps: 1) Computing the vector of criteria weights. 2) Computing the matrix of option scores. 3) Ranking the options.
Results and Discussion: The results and findings of this study showed that criteria related to infrastructure have the highest priority in terms of tourists and then cultural and social attractions, standards of facilities and tourist services and religious, historical and natural attractions is ranked. Incompatibility coefficient obtains less than 0.1, which indicates consistency in judgments. The results of prioritizing the following criteria shown; According to the provincial rural tourism security was the highest priority, weighing 0.077. The sanitary facilities of the path to the village, cleaning, environment and facilities, easy access road, holding traditional ceremonies and Accommodation in rural homes are ranked by the weight of 0.075, 0.066, 0.063, 0.063 and 0.062 in the second to sixth. The least important in rural tourism was the density of tourists and historical sites, by weight 0.022 and 0.037 respectively.
Then, to rank the target villages of rural tourism in the province, villages divided in the three villages, according to experts of the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, including East villages, Galoogah, Behshahr, Nekah, Miandorood and Sari, central villages, including Savadkuh, Ghaemshahr, Jouibar, Babol, Babolsar, Fereydunkenar, Mahmudabad, Amol and Nour and villages in the West, including, Ramsar, Tonekabon, Abasabad, Chalus and Noshahr. Then, priorities that the region was carried out by rural tourism are used to compare and rank the three villages. For this purpose, the opinions of 11 experts and scholars of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism has been used. Thus, options (the target villages) have been compared and ranked according to expert opinions to that rural tourism prioritizes. Finally, the final weight and options priority have been made based on expert opinion and according to the priorities set by tourists. Based on expert opinion and according to the priorities set by the tourists, the highest priority to tourism was in west of the province and villages in Central and eastern provinces are the next priorities respectively.
Conclusion: Rural tourism potentially can be considered as fundamental approaches in sustainable rural development. This study, using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is trying to prioritize the factors that affecting rural tourism in Mazandaran province. The results and findings of this study showed that criteria related to infrastructure have the highest priority in terms of tourists and then cultural and social attractions, standards of facilities and tourist services and religious, historical and natural attractions ranked. Based on expert opinion and according to the priorities set by the tourists, the highest priority to tourism was in west of the province and villages in Central and Eastern provinces respectively are the next priorities. Thus, according to the results, equipping tourist attractions to levels of health services, providing facilities and financial resources to equip and organize existing settlements is suggested.
S.M. Fahimifard; M. Salarpour; M. Ahmadpour Borazjani; H. Mohammadi; M. Sanaei
Abstract
Introduction: Stock shortage is one of the development impasses in developing countries and trough it the agriculture sector has faced with the most limitation. The share of Iran’s agricultural sector from total investments after the Islamic revolution (1979) has been just 5.5 percent. This fact causes ...
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Introduction: Stock shortage is one of the development impasses in developing countries and trough it the agriculture sector has faced with the most limitation. The share of Iran’s agricultural sector from total investments after the Islamic revolution (1979) has been just 5.5 percent. This fact causes low efficiency in Iran’s agriculture sector. For instance per each 1 cubic meter of water in Iran’s agriculture sector, less that 1 kilogram dry food produced and each Iranian farmer achieves less annual income and has less mechanization in comparison with similar countries in Iran’s 1404 perspective document. Therefore, it is clear that increasing investment in agriculture sector, optimize the budget allocation for this sector is mandatory however has not been adequately and scientifically revised until now. Thus, in this research optimum budget allocation of Iran- Khorasan Razavi province agriculture sector was modeled.
Materials and Methods: In order to model the optimum budget allocation of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector at first optimum budget allocation between agriculture programs was modeled with compounding three indexes: 1. Analyzing the priorities of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector experts with the application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), 2. The average share of agriculture sector programs from 4th country’s development program for Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector, and 3.The average share of agriculture sector programs from 5th country’s development program for Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector. Then, using Delphi technique potential indexes of each program was determined. After that, determined potential indexes were weighted using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and finally, using numerical taxonomy model to optimize allocation of the program’s budget between cities based on two scenarios. Required data, also was gathered from the budget and planning office of Khorasan Razavi’s Jahad Keshavarzi organization during 2006-2015. They were collected through distributed binary comparison questionnaires related to AHP model between Khorasan Razavi’s agricultural experts in 2015 and distributed questionnaires related to Delphi technique between Khorasan Razavi’s agricultural experts in 2015. Indeed, Super decision and Taxonomy software were applied to analyze the gathered data.
Results and Discussion: Results of budget allocation of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector using three mentioned indexes showed that between 8 programs, P1 and P6 have the most and least share, respectively. The results of the Delphi technique for determining potential indexes of between cities budget allocation of agriculture sector programs indicated that totally there are 62 indexes. Findings of between cities budget allocation of agriculture sector programs showed that for budget allocation of P1 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Kalat and Davarzan cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P2 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Bardaskan and Kalat cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P3 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Mashhad and Joghatai cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P4 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Jovein and Torghabe Shandiz cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P5 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Chenaran and Neishabour cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P6 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Mashhad and Khoushab cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P7 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Neishabour and Saleh Abad cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. Finally, for budget allocation of P8 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Neishabour and Khoushab cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa.
Conclusion: The study concludes that the agriculture sector budget of Khorasan Razavi Province’s has not been allocated optimally. Therefore, paying attention to this fact that agriculture sector budget allocation which carried out previously between various programs, have been provided different instructions for opposite ideas always caused to challenge between beneficiary groups. This study provided a scientific and comprehensive model for budget allocation of agriculture sector between programs and cities using agriculture experts, and can be suggested to governors and Jahad Keshavarzi organizations to apply the results.
H. Moumenihelali; A. Ahmadpour
Abstract
Introduction: One of the fundamental issues in the agricultural sector in Iran is the absence of optimal water and soil resources utilization and lack of new agricultural science and technology adoption through major prevailing transformations in agricultural land exploitation system. The studies conducted ...
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Introduction: One of the fundamental issues in the agricultural sector in Iran is the absence of optimal water and soil resources utilization and lack of new agricultural science and technology adoption through major prevailing transformations in agricultural land exploitation system. The studies conducted in the history of agricultural development in Iran cast light on the fact that the farming system’s role in the agricultural development in Iran is of great importance. And water and soil resources utilization has been one of the fundamental issues of agriculture which has enjoyed major consideration after the implementation of land restructuring. The agriculture farming systems are referred to as the focus of all activities related to sustainable agricultural development in Iran and it is believed that the shift and transition from traditional agriculture to modern and profitable agriculture through appropriate, improved and newly developed agricultural establishments are the major activities which can increase productivity and improve the overall performance of the agricultural sector and thus contribute to sustainable development more than any other factor. Hence, such significance will be more evident when the small and scattered farmlands in many cases have imposed some limitations in the application of agricultural techniques and machinery, equipping and developing the infrastructure and efficient use of resources with appropriate performance forcing agricultural policymakersto be always looking for ways to deal with it. Therefore, identifying the relative advantage of any farming system specified for each area and region in the country seems important. Accordingly, the Mazandaran province is regarded as one of the production hubs in producing crops such as rice, wheat and canola in the country playing a major role in supplying food. With a detailed analysis of research literature, the economic, ecological, social, technical and policy criteria were identified as sustainability criteria for agricultural activities in the province along with Cooperative, Commercial and Peasant alternatives as the dominant farming system in the present study. Consequently, the identification of the most suitable farming system for sustainable agricultural activities in the province serves as the main objective of this research.Materials and Methods: The study adopted an applied survey approach to conduct the study in 2014 in Mazandaran. The statistical population comprised of all professionals and experts working in the field of sustainability aspects and farming systems with a deep understanding and sufficient information on the issue being selected through purposive and snowball sampling summing up to 15 subjects. A questionnaire was used to collect data. In order to determine the face and content validities, the professors’ and specialists’ comments were taken into account and to estimate the reliability, the inconsistency rate was used. To achieve the main objective, the analytic hierarchy process technique by considering 5 criteria and 33 sub-criteria on three farming types (cooperative, commercial and peasant) were used. The Expert Choice software 2000 was applied for data analysis. It should be noted that the analytic hierarchy process is a multi-criteria decision-making approach being based on paired comparison which enables managers and policymakers to review various scenarios. Likewise, it is sought to consider the experts’ opinions from the most central units involved instead of focusing on the number of decision-makers.Results and Discussion: Based on the results and considering criteria prioritization reveal the fact that the ecological,policy, social dimensions compared with the economic and technical criteria remain more imperative. Therefore, the ecological, political and social dimensions are the most important aspects of agricultural activities sustainability in the province. Hence, it can be concluded that in order to maintain the sustainability of agricultural activities, the emphasis should be placed on ecological issues which are at present a great challenge and crisis at the international level and social policy based on sustainable agriculture. The growing integration of land restructuring and biological and organic farming development in recent years advocates the importance of the ecological aspect. Similarly, considering the ecological, political, economic and technical criteria, the commercial and cooperative farming system ranked first and second, respectively. Nevertheless, consistent with social criterion, the cooperative and commercial farming system kept the first and second priorities.Conclusion: Combining the relative weight of criteria and sub-criteria in agricultural activities sustainability and the farming system, the commercial farming system with good Inconsistency Ratio was the most desired and applicable farming system in sustainable agricultural activities and cooperative farming system with a diminutive difference ranked second. Based on the research findings, the most appropriate system was the commercial farming system and the cooperative farming system was second.However, since such model is not widely applied in the province at present, it is necessary that provincial and even national policymakers and practitioners consider the issue and the agricultural activities development and establishment mechanisms in terms of modern commercial and cooperative farming system be provided. As in most of these types of farming systems, the criteria identified in this research are substantially observed and their emphasis can serve as an effective step towards the development of sustainable agriculture.
