Consumers’ Demands and Preferences for Organic Foods: A Survey Study in Mashhad, Iran

Agriculture has always been an important sector of the Iranian economy. For this reason, the investigation of consumers' demands and priorities in relation to organic products is our concern since no study has been conducted in this area in Iran. This paper aims to investigate consumers' knowledge concerning organic foodstuffs and the factors influencing consumption of organic product in the families of Mashhad so that some recommendations may finally be presented. In fact, while organic farming has been promoted as an environmentally-friendly approach and has been developed during the last few years in most developed countries, there is little emphasis placed on this in developing countries such as Iran. In order to identify consumer demand for organic foods, 180 respondents were interviewed by means of a questionnaire

Assessment of Resilience of Pistachio Agroecosystems in Rafsanjan Plain in Iran

This study assessed the resilience of pistachio production systems in the Rafsanjan plain in Iran using an index of behavior-based indicators. One-hundred fifty pistachio orchards located in five major production areas were studied in 2016. The data was subjected to three-step multi-criteria analysis, including (i) normalization and aggregation; (ii) determination of the weights representing the priorities for each criterion and evaluation of the performance of each indicator; and (iii) comparison. The results showed that the study areas had problematic statuses regarding the indicators of membership in grassroots organizations, innate abilities, water sources, production stability, and insurance. They had critical or moderate statuses concerning the indicators of use of organic fertilizers, use of pesticides, soil fertility index, water-use efficiency (kg/m3), trust in government, access to advisor services (extension), on-the-job training, and diversity of marketing. They had positive levels for the indicators of productivity, diversity of cultivars, diversity of on-farm practices, and exchange of information. We recommend the enhancement of the transformability capacity in PPSs by changing the focus from optimal states and the determinants of maximum sustainable yield (MSY paradigm) to adaptive resource management that includes developing participatory platforms for collaboration of usage of water resources