Identifying Factors Affecting the Preserve of Agricultural Land Use to Achieve Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

One of the major problems and challenges in the agriculture field is the land use change that has been threatened sustainability of agriculture sector. Bostanabad County, in terms of agricultural land use changes is taken in second place East Azarbaijan province that caused the agricultural sustainability faced with major challenges. This study aimed to identify the affecting factors on user changing of agricultural land in this county. The Multi-Nominal Logit model was applied and the required data has collected through a questionnaire which completed by the farmers using proportional stratified random sampling in 2016. The results indicated that economic factors such as expected income of new change, increasing land value, raising user’s social activity opportunity, near to road and highways, non-agriculture incomes, household size, the total land area under cultivation, agricultural intra-activates (income diversity), and type of land ownership has a significant effect on land use changes. Also, by increasing the employment rate, the possibility of land use preservation will rise. Therefore it is expected that the land use changes will reduce by taking proper employment policies and supports. The annual income of agricultural activity has negative and significant effect on the change of land use to industrial studios. It is recommended that the government can be improve the farmers motivation to preserve of agricultural land use via making and applying proper marketing policies, modifying laws and regulations of land use preservation, and improving income support policies.

Keywords

• Bostanabad County
• Land Use Preservation
• Multi-nominal Logit Model
• Sustainable Agriculture