Assessment of Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture in East Azerbaijan province

Document Type : Research Paper

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Abstract

     The environment is the basis for the agricultural activities and natural resources are its production inputs. Therefore it seems that agricultural sustainability plays an important role in protecting natural capital and environment, considering the wide relation among agriculture with natural resources and environment. Due to the importance of this subject in sustainable development, this research evaluates the environmental sustainability of agriculture in counties of East Azerbaijan province by using of Group Analytic Hierarchy Process. The indicators weight were determined by survey from experts group and other required data have been collected from the secondary sources, including the Agriculture Jihad, Regional Water organization and statistical yearbooks of East Azerbaijan province in 2015. The results showed that experts group believed that indicators of non-agricultural water use, efficient irrigation systems and, ground-water level with relative importance 0.129, 0.116 and 0.094 respectively were the important factors that influenced the sustainability. The results of the sustainability classification showed that the counties located in the north and northeast of the province have more environmental sustainability, while the counties located in the southwest of the province and on the coast of the Urmia Lake have worse environmental sustainability. Also, the results of this study revealed the weaknesses of various counties of the province in achieving environmental sustainability of agriculture. According to the results, it is suggested that with the expansion of pressure irrigation systems, refinement the traditional water transfer systems in farms, prevention of unauthorized well drilling and changing the cropping pattern adapted to climate change conditions, help to the reduction of agricultural water consumption and strengthen the underground water resources of the province.
 

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References

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JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION
Volume 29, Issue 3
October 2019
Pages 271-286

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