cropping pattern of agronomy products in view of relative advantage in ilam province

abstract with consideration to the resource limitation, it seems necessary to design cropping pattern scientifically in order to increase productivity of production factors and to decrease production average costs. this studyaimed at identifying the optimum cropping pattern based on comparative advantage in three counties of ilam province including darreh shahr, ivan, and shirvan chardaval. to calculate comparative advantage indexes, we used the dataset associated with the year 2011 . moreover, linear programming approach was used to identify optimum cropping pattern. the results showed that the study counties do not have comparitive advategies in producing some of their products. . comparing the linear programming results with the current situation, it is concluded that averagely 50 percent of the current products are acceptable based on the comparitive advantage index. consequently, to economically adjust the current crop pattern, it is recommended to consider products with comparative advantege for each county.