ارزیابی اثربخشی اقتصادی طرح مدیریت به‌هنگام باغ‌های پسته

1. Introduction

In most parts of the world, agricultural extension often involves general advice given to farmers in a large growing area, for example a region, a district, or a province. Such agricultural extension practices do not take into account the heterogeneous and complex biophysical and socio-economic conditions of smallholder agriculture. On the other hand, site-specific agricultural extension includes recommendations that are tailored to the situation of an individual farmer or farm. Such recommendations may be more effective than conventional extension methods for increasing performance and productivity. In addition, given the existing challenges, interaction between research, extension, and farmers, and directing research toward producers and their needs, and farmer participation in relevant decision-making, are essential to achieve farmer-centered extension approaches, which have been emphasized in various studies and countries to empower farmers. To address the two issues of site-specific agricultural extension and farmer participation in extension, comprehensive production-extension model sites have been proposed as one of the most important models and methods for promoting and educating the latest research achievements and adopting new technologies in Iran's agricultural sector. "Comprehensive model production-extension sites" include sites that are selected as models in the lands and exploitation units of extension workers, including agricultural, horticultural, livestock, natural resources, etc., and all plans, technical recommendations, and related research findings intended by the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad are implemented, evaluated, disseminated, and developed in them. In most past studies, comprehensive sites are a model from the perspective of extension science and are based on Kirkpatrick's four-level method. These four levels include the reaction level, the learning level, the behavior level, and the results (performance) level. Most of these studies have focused on the first three levels and the level of consequences has received less attention. This is while the success of all previous levels only bears fruit if success is achieved at the performance level. One of the main consequences that must be considered is the economic performance. These sites can only be justified from an economic point of view if they lead to increased profitability of agricultural activity. In the current study, the economic evaluation of model pistachio extension production sites was considered by comparing member and non-member farmers, considering the actual outcome occurring in the orchard and calculating the gross profit earned.

2. Methodology

To collect research data, all member farmers of the main sites were approached. In other words, the basis of work in this field was the census of the population under study. However, only 21 farmers who were members of the main site agreed to respond. Also, from among the farmers who were members of the functional sites of each main site whose information had been collected, 2 farmers were randomly selected, and a total of 41 people from this group were also questioned. Also, to match the number of member farmers on the main sites, 19 non-member farmers were randomly selected and questioned. Thus, the total sample studied was 81 pistachio farmers. The data collection tool required for economic analysis was a researcher-made questionnaire. To assess validity, a preliminary questionnaire was provided to several members of the faculty of the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization, and after receiving comments, necessary amendments were made and a final questionnaire was prepared. The reliability and internal consistency of the questions were confirmed through a pre-test by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient (ɑ=0.75). In this study, first, the gross profit per hectare from pistachio production was compared between three groups of farmers: members of main sites, members of functional sites, and non-member farmers using analysis of variance. In the next step, the effect of membership in model sites on gross profit was measured using the production function estimation method. To measure the economic effects of comprehensive model sites for timely management of pistachio orchards, the partial budgeting method was used. In all cases, the SPSS26 software package was used to perform calculations.



3. Findings

The results of the study showed that farmers belonging to the main site had higher yields per hectare. This is despite the fact that the current production costs between the three groups of farmers are almost equal and do not have a significant difference. In other words, while the three groups of farmers spend equally, farmers who are members of model sites have higher performance. The results also showed that pistachios produced by farmers belonging to the main sites are of higher quality and therefore have the ability to be sold at a higher price. The results also showed that the three groups of farmers studied had significant differences in terms of annual gross profit per hectare. So that the highest gross profit is related to farmers who are members of the main model site. This is while gardeners who are members of functional sites have the lowest gross profit per hectare, and non-member farmers are somewhere between these two groups. Although the profitability of pistachio orchards on functional sites has decreased, the results showed that membership in the main sites has led to a significant increase in profitability. In other words, the decrease in profitability of functional pistachio orchards must be investigated, and the implementation of model pistachio production extension sites will inherently increase profitability. The results of the partial budgeting showed that the implementation of these model sites was socially beneficial and had positive economic returns.





4. Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, using the multivariate regression method and eliminating heterogeneity among the studied farmers, the gross profit from pistachio production in Iran was compared between three groups of farmers who were members of the main, functional, and non-member model sites. The results of the research showed that model production extension sites increase economic profitability and have economic justification. Further investigation showed that gardeners who are members of the main site have higher profits per hectare than non-member farmers. This is despite the fact that farmers who are members of functional sites have enjoyed lower profitability than non-member farmers. This may happen for two reasons. First, inherent differences between different groups of farmers may make general extension recommendations unsuccessful. The regression results showed that pistachio farmers are heterogeneous in three areas: the use of traditional inputs (animal fertilizers and labor), the effects of climate change (due to different geographical regions and the quantity and quality of water used by the orchard), and the pistachio variety. Failure to pay attention to this heterogeneity may pose a problem in the effectiveness of extensional recommendations. Functional farmers may have problems such as severe water scarcity and water salinity and want to address these problems with extension recommendations. However, before implementing the extension recommendations provided for problem-free main sites, they must address the structural problems of their orchard. The second point is the rate and frequency of use of extensional recommendations. This shows that the use of modern agricultural methods must be fully implemented in order to be responsive and increase profitability in this sector. This is while semi-traditional-semi-modern agriculture may have a negative impact on the economic efficiency of production. In other words, farmers must either continue with their traditional methods or use modern methods fully and correctly. Incomplete use of modern methods will have a negative impact on profitability.