assessment of farming systems for sustainability of farming activities in the mazandaran province

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.