Introduction
The fragmentation and segmentation of agricultural lands is one of the challenges facing Iran's rural development programs that leads to inefficient utilization of production resources, reduced productivity, increased production costs, stabilization and expansion of inappropriate farming patterns and ineffective use of machinery. Most agricultural planners and policy makers consider the solution to the problems of land scattering as land integration. Land consolidation requires redistribution of land ownership so that farmers have smaller, larger, more compact, and more continuous land parcels. However, the implementation of land consolidation policy in most parts of the Iran in the recent years such as the villages of Nehbandan city (located in South Khorasan province), has always faced problems with farmers' participation and successful implementation of the project. The purpose of this study was to determine the deterrent and promoter factors affecting farmers' participation in the implementation of a land consolidation plan in rural areas of Nehbandan.
Materials and Methods
This research is a quantitative research in terms of nature and with regard to the purpose of the research, it is a kind of applied research and in terms of data collection, it is one of the descriptive-analytical researches conducted by survey technique. The statistical population of the study consisted of active users in the agricultural sector. 264 individuals were selected by using Cochran formula and selected by multistage random sampling. Data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by university professors and agricultural experts and its reliability was confirmed by pretest and Cronbach's alpha coefficients for different parts of the questionnaire in the range of 0.72 to 0.82. Combined method of interview was used to collect data and questionnaire was completed. To this end, a six-part questionnaire including questions on individual, agronomic, socio-economic characteristics of users, and items for assessing respondents' attitude and knowledge about the nature of land integration, measuring their willingness to participate in land consolidation project implementation, and Factors affecting land consolidation (deterrent and promoter) were also provided.
Discussion and Results
The results showed that 39.8% of respondents have a low tendency, 11.7% have a moderate tendency and 48.6% have a high tendency for land consolidation. The results of the correlation test indicated a significant relationship between the willingness to participate in land consolidation and variables of agricultural experience, level of land ownership, number of farm plots, average size of plots, area under cultivation, land distance to water source and also village, the level of social trust, awareness about land consolidation benefits and the level of government support from land consolidation plan. According to the finding of factor analysis, 71.75% of total variance of deterrent and promoter factors of land consolidation were eight factors as follow: Agronomic (15.86%), credit-supportive (10.78%), organizational (9.51%), economic (8.45%), psychological (7.69%), motivational (6.87%), educational-extensional (6.73%) and legal (5.83%). According to these results, the most important factors in accelerating land consolidation are agricultural and credit support.
Conclusions
This study has attempted to go beyond previous land consolidation research in Iran by providing a more detailed analysis of the basic processes related to land consolidation and using socio-economic data of farmers in Nehbandan villages of South Khorasan province, to explain the most important factors accelerating land integration.
According to the results of this research, the following suggestions are offered to accelerate the land consolidation process:
-Due to the significant relationship between farmers’ cooperation in implementing the land consolidation project and the rate of farmers’ awareness of land consolidation, implementation of training and extension programs to increase the knowledge and benefits of the positive effects of land integration is necessary.
- Given the positive effect of social trust (mutual trust between farmers), it is recommended to attract and retain trusted peasants by establishing local and intermediary groups, providing the basis for building more trust between the people as well as between the people and authorities established and voluntary participation of farmers integration projects were provided.
-Finally, it can be said that the best outcome will be achieved when the land consolidation policy is first included in the set of agricultural and rural development plans. Secondly, complementary measures should be taken to improve the economic and social status of rural settlements.