Abstract

Sustainable development and the definition of indicators to assess progress towards sustainability have become a high priority in scientific research. The purpose of this study was two-fold: first, to determine agricultural sustainability criteria; second, to determine optimum partnership models for agricultural sustainability. This study was conducted in Ilam Province of Iran. The populations of the research were 30 farmers, who were interviewed to determine the sustainable agricultural development criteria. A discussion of the nine criteria was developed. Through an interview we were able to determine how they perceived the relative importance of these criteria. A questionnaire was developed based on analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Each question consisted of a pair-wise comparison of two criteria. Therefore, the nine criteria and four alternatives resulted in a total of 72 questions. First the respondents were asked to indicate the relative importance of the two criteria with respect to the overall goal. Finally, the farmers were asked to indicate the relative importance of the two alternatives (partnership models) with respect to each criterion. The results indicated thatreducing farmers migration, sharing with agricultural engineer, land consolidation, increasing farmers awareness, crop rotation, using less amount of chemical fertilizer, using less amount of chemical pesticide, fertilizer recommendation and allocation efficiency are the most important criteria for sustainable agriculture in Iran. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to determine the critical factors that affected the priority of alternatives. Also, results of application of AHP indicated that private and cooperative partnership models are the most useful partnership models in the agricultural sustainability. The results of this study demonstrated that the private partnership model for agricultural sustainability is imperative.

Key words: AHP, partnership, Iran, sustainable agricultural development.