Identifying and Prioritizing Factors Affecting the Prosperity of Rice Production Business in Mazandaran Province with the View of Sustainable Rural Employment

Background : The inadequacy of the supply of agricultural inputs with the demand for various products of this sector reveals the need for the optimal use of resources and increasing productivity.In this regard, addressing the issue of productivity in rice production is very important due to its essential role in feeding different sections of society, providing food security, reducing dependence on imports and foreign exchange, strengthening trade interactions with other countries, generating income, creating employment, creating balance in the business and capital market, and many other issues.In 2022, Mazandaran Province produced 1.6 million tons of paddy as a strategic product, responsible for 44.47% of Iran's paddy production, and in this sense, it has been ranked first in the country.This province has long been known as the hub of rice production, and this user product, having about 76% of Mazandaran's irrigated crop area, has always made an important contribution to the province's employment.For this purpose, the present study aimed to identify factors affecting the prosperity of the rice production business in Mazandaran Province, focusing on measuring the inefficiency of various production inputs, especially the labor force.Methods: Three institutional, managerial, and policy-market criteria effective in the prosperity of rice production business were extracted in this study.The input criterion includes all production factors affecting the productivity of this product, which includes eight subcriteria as water, labor, land, fertilizer, poison, machinery, capital, and seed.The management criterion is all management actions by relevant organizations and bodies (Jahad Keshavarzi, Regional Water, Room of Commerce), which includes six regulatory, executive, organizational, service, and innovation options.The political-market criterion also covered the macro-government policies that can affect the productivity of rice, and there are six financial, economic, structural, commercial, marketing, and strategic development options.Thus, 19 effective options in the productivity of rice production were considered in this study.In this study, factors affecting the productivity of this product were exracted and prioritized using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, measuring the production efficiency of important cultivars of this product (high-quality rice and high-yielding rice) using the data envelopment analysis method (DEA), and then examining productivity changes over time using the Malmquist Index (MI).The data needed for identifying and prioritizing factors in this research were collected by designing a questionnaire, which was completed based on the opinions of 18 experts, including those from the Agricultural Jihad Organization of Mazandaran Province and Sari City, as well as the academic community.The statistics and information of the Agricultural Jahad Organization of the province were used to complete the data in measuring the productivity of production and efficiency of inputs.Results : The results indicate that among the eight production factors, water, mechanization, and land are the most important input factors in rice production with weights of 0.36, 0.2, and 0.14, respectively.Among the five management factors, benefiting from the opinions of agricultural experts, implementing the optimal cultivation pattern of crops according to the climatic conditions and the status of water resources in the province, and using new technologies in agricultural operations with weights of 0.40, 0.25, and 0.14, respectively, were known as three important and superior factors for the management of rice production business.In addition, the financial, economic options, and improvement of the structure of the rice product marketing system were determined with the weights of 0.30, 0.22, and 0.19, respectively, as three policy-market subcriteria affecting the rice productivity of this province.Based on the findings in the agricultural year of 2017-2018 in the east of this province, Qaemshahr City, the land, machinary, poison, and