Impacts of organizational arrangements on conservation agriculture: insights from interpretive structural modeling in Iran

Conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted worldwide as an approach to sustainable resource management and better productivity. Promotion and adoption of CA in Iran have been receiving increased attention from the national government over recent years. Therefore, to speed up development of CA as a basis for sustainable development, drivers that influence the development of CA need to be identified and modeled. The main aim of this study is to present a comprehensive model for CA development in Iran by identifying the institutional drivers that influence its promotion and determining the relationship between drivers. At first, the drivers identified from the literature and interviews with experts, and the relationships among the drivers were explored and clarified using Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM). A cross-impact matrix multiplication was applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis, which was then used to categorize the drivers in four sub-groups. The results showed that creating a suitable organizational structure is a very significant driving factor for CA development in Iran. Strong driving power and weak dependence associated with this factor should be treated as a critical driver. If CA shall expand more rapidly in future, then Iran’s government should invest in an appropriate organizational structure for it

The investment behaviour of dairy farms in transition economies

This article investigates dairy farm investment behaviour and the presence of soft budget constraints in the dairy farms of Baltic and Central European transition countries – Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia – using individual dairy farm accountancy panel data for the years 2007–2015. The empirical results confirm that gross dairy farm investment is positively associated with gross dairy farm investment for the previous year for financially unconstrained dairy farms, and negatively for financially constrained dairy farms. It is also positively associated with public investment subsidies, and, except for Slovenia, with growth in real sales for financially unconstrained dairy farms. Mixed results are found for gross dairy farm investment squared and cash flow variables. A particularly significant negative cash flow regression coefficient implies significant soft budget constraints for financially unconstrained Estonian and Slovenian dairy farms, while insignificant cash flow regression coefficients imply weak soft budget constraints for financially unconstrained Hungarian dairy farms

Modeling ecosystem functions’ failure modes: formulating fuzzy risk priorities in the forests of western Iran

peer reviewedThe concepts of ecosystem functions and ecosystem services are among the most important issues related to ecosystems. These concepts have a noticeable role in forest ecosystem management under the diversity of ecosystem functions. Understanding these concepts and their associated failure modes can be the first step in ecosystem management. This research attempts to demonstrate a new model for hierarchical planning according to these failure modes. We suggest the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method and risk priority assessment to determine failure modes in ecosystem functions. In this study, the fuzzy method was used to measure the occurrence, severity, and detection of each ecosystem function well. The results of the fuzzy FMEA method for the assessment of ecosystem functions were integrated with the issue of transforming the problem tree into an objective tree. The model was utilized in a case study of the ecosystem functions for the Zagros forests in Iran which have socio-economic issues and are managed by a form of social forestry. The results of this study show that among the ecosystem functions, waste treatment, biological control, and nutrient regulation with Risk Priority Numbers (RPNs) of 738, 646, and 567, respectively, have the highest need for care. Although these factors belong to the regulation function, along with climate change, the role of local communities in these issues is undeniable. The findings of the study illustrate that the ecosystem management of social forests needs to focus on organizing the production functions in short term. This organizing is in the direction of achieving the regulation functions in the long term. The new model can well represent particular actions to improve ecosystem functions and planning of forest ecosystems

Are Organic Farms Less Efficient? The Case of Estonian Dairy Farms

The paper investigates the technical efficiency of conventional and organic dairy farms in Estonia in the period 2006‒2015 using Farm Accountancy Data Network. We analyse self-selection into organic farming using the propensity-score-matching approach and explicitly test the hypothesis that organic and conventional farms apply homogeneous technology. We find that organic farms are less efficient. However, the difference in technical efficiency between organic and conventional farms decreases substantially when the technical efficiency assessment incorporates the use of the appropriate technology. The lack of growth of technical efficiency over time indicates that there might be a lack of knowledge in organic milk production that hinders its development. Since technical efficiency increases with farm size, it is important that organic dairy farms increase their scale

Valuing the role of key stakeholders in modelling forest cooperative game: a case study of Iranian forests

peer reviewedThe aim of this study was to investigate the issues of forest stakeholders with regard to their role in forest management. For this aim, the theory of calculating Shapley value was used for modelling a cooperative game for participatory management in Iranian forests. Four scenarios were used to examine different perspectives, including the perspectives of the academic, research, and management departments as well as the average results of the three mentioned scenarios. For these scenarios, Shapley value relations and calculations were used in game theory. The results showed among the stakeholder values, the local community had the highest normalized Shapley value with a value of 0.41. Then forest management stakeholder with a value of 0.37 has the second priority. Finally, the research and education section has the last priority with a value of 0.22. Accordingly, the main column of creating participatory management is the participation of local communities in forest management plans. The role of local communities in forest management is more prominent than other main stakeholders. These Shapley values can be a good guide for budget distribution in forest management based on the role of players

Conodont biostratigraphy and sedimentary history in the upper Tremadoc at Uuga, Cape Pakri, NW Estonia

The upper Tremadocian boundary beds at Cape Pakri, NW Estonia, consist of an extremely friable glauconitic sandstone, which presents a challenge to detailed biostratigraphy. A combination of sedimentological and biostratigraphical criteria has served to clarify the tempo and mode of the processes that formed the sandstone and explain its relationships to strata immediately below and above it. Apatitic conodont elements, which abound in all these sediments, are particularly well suited to tracing the geological history of the surrounding sediment, since they can be repeatedly included in the sediment, eroded and redeposited, often leaving telltale marks on the elements which are nevertheless identifiable. By separating the indigenous elements from those that had been redeposited, we could place the local upper boundary of the Tremadocian at slightly more than 1 m above the base of the c. 4 m-thick sandy deposit. We showed that the sandstone, where 58-97% of the conodont elements have been redeposited, had been formed during four successive phases of sand deposition. The entire sandstone unit belongs to the Paroistodus proteus Zone. In the sandy and clayey Varanguan beds of the Paltodus deltifer Zone that underlie the sandstone, less than 50% of the conodont elements had been redeposited. The upper part of the section consists of limestone beds belonging to the Oepikodus evae Zone, where the redeposited portion of the conodont elements decreases upwards