Identification and Management of the Main Challenges in Saffron Industry in Iran

Saffron, as one of the most expensive agricultural product around the world, has an important place among Iran’s non-oil exports. Therefore, it is important to solve the problems in Iran's saffron industry as the world’s largest saffron producer. Thus, this study attempts to identify the challenges that directly and indirectly affect the saffron industry and cause stagnation. The challenges have been identified and ranked considering the cause-effect relationships between these challenges and the experts’ opinion in this field using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). The results of the study show that the absence of the plan of the saffron industry development in the country’s budget plan and budget allocation, lack of a holistic and long-term vision and transitional decisions taken by the state managers and policy-makers, multiplicity of policy-making centers and lack of interaction between them are the most important challenges in the saffron industry. Finally, appropriate management strategies have been proposed to help saffron industry achieve stable conditions.