Analysis of the Effects of Agricultural Inputs Price Liberalization on the Production of Sunflower in Khoy Zone

Abstract

Sunflower is one of four main annual oil plants that cultivatedin oil and nut varieties. This plant as an important and industrialfood product and because of nutritional features andthe potential for earning exchange has become a valuableproduct in foreign and inner markets and has a special positionin agricultural sector. Khoy, by producing 40 percent ofsunflower productions of country annually, is the greatest sunflowerproducer in Iran. The main purpose of this study is theanalysis of the effects of inputs price liberalization on productionof sunflower producers in this city. This study is according toa field research and cross-sectional data of 2009 have beenused for it. Results show input price liberalization policy byincreasing inputs prices and decreasing demand amounts ofinputs, increases the production costs and decreases the productionand totally it`s harmful for sunflower producers. Forpreventing negative effects of liberalization on production,adopting necessary policies such as merging small farms andmaking big ones to profit by economies of scale and increasingproduction and productivity with the resulted incomes fromliberalization and spending them in scientific researches toproduce with low costs are suggested.

Keywords

• Sunflower
• Liberalization
• Production factor
• Production elasticity
• Khoy.