Agriculture also needs to compete with other types of land uses with urbanization being an important driver of agricultural land loss. By converting arable lands to a barren desert, desertification is a growing global concern, particularly in the MENA region and Iran. The redistribution of croplands from the low-quality lands to more suitable ones has potentials to improve crop yields and the sustainability of agriculture in Iran. A recent global-scale study concluded that by reallocating croplands to suitable environmental conditions, the global biomass production could increase by 30% even without any land expansion. However, reallocation planning requires accurate mapping of croplands, which is not currently available for Iran. Inefficient agricultural practices in unsuitable lands need to be avoided as they produce little yields at the cost of exacerbating land degradation and water scarcity problem. Our estimations shows that rainfed wheat production from a small acreage of 1.0 million ha in the medium suitability class can equal that from 5.5 million ha of lands in unsuitable or very poor areas . Although this conclusion may not hold for other crops grown in Iran, the wheat crop could be a good candidate to make such a generalization as wheat is the most widely cultivated crop in the country and is considered as a very low demanding plant, which has adapted to a broad range of contrasting environments. Redistribution of croplands, however,nft hydroponic system will not be a trivial task for both the Iranian decision makers and stakeholders due to various socio-economic and logistic barriers. Lands found suitable for agriculture may not be easily accessible if scattered sparsely or occur in remote areas.
Given the land and water limitations, increasing the crop production in Iran needs to be achieved through sustainable intensification, which has been found a promising approach for ensuring food security in several global-scale studies. As such, it is of vital importance for Iran to properly use its limited agricultural lands, improve water use efficiency, optimize crop pattern distribution, and adopt modern cultivation techniques. Practicing certain industrial agriculture methods in the unsuitable lands might be a viable strategy to sustainably maintain these lands in the agricultural sector while avoiding the potential socio-economic and political costs associated with redistribution of agricultural lands and farming populations. For example, protected agriculture can be established at some of these locations to cope with both land suitability and water availability constraints. While water insufficiency is a major limiting factor for both field and protected farming, the latter will be affected to a lesser extent. Our suitability assessment is based on a general set of requirements known to affect the productivity of a large number of crops, but there would exist crops with exceptional adaptive traits that can grow under less favourable conditions. Although we used the most updated geospatial data at the finest available resolution, the result of our suitability analysis should be interpreted in commensuration with the reliability and quality of the original data. For example, whereas the GlobCover database reliably maps the distribution of forests and rangelands in Iran, our visual inspection of satellite images showed that sometimes their utilized method lacks the required precision to distinguish cultivated from uncultivated croplands. Although soil erosion was not directly incorporated into our analysis, the use of slope at the very high resolution implicitly accounts for this effect. The interaction between variables and the quality of subsoil are among other factors that can be considered in the future studies.
This study used precipitation as the only water availability factor. Including surface water and groundwater availability can further improve the adequacy of the land evaluation analysis. Given the good correlation between water availability and land suitability for agriculture, the general findings of this study are not expected to change significantly by the inclusion of water availability conditions. Nevertheless, due to the current water shortage constraints across the country, the potential agricultural capacity of the country is likely to decrease when water availability is added to the analysis. Although global projections suggest that the suitable lands may expand with climate changes, how these changes, particularly in precipitation pattern, would affect the suitability of Iran’s land for crop production in the future is subject to high degree of uncertainty and needs further work.Agriculture is one of the most important industries in California, enjoying over $22 billion in farm cash receipts annually. In addition to economic benefits, national and state data show that agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries with respect to occupational illnesses and injuries. Because Latino and Latina workers provide the majority of production labor in the industry, they are at uniquely increased risk for occupational injury and illness. Regulation of the agricultural workplace is under the purview of several federal, state, and local agencies, including the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, State of California , Department of Industrial Relations, Department of Pesticide Regulation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, county health departments, county agricultural commissioners, and the California Highway Patrol . The fragmentation of regulatory activities causes inefficiency and confusion on the part of employers, employees, and regulators. In particular, lack of information sharing between agencies leads to ineffective enforcement and educational efforts. Consequently, a pilot program was begun in 1992 that partnered agencies to improve efficiency through sharing of resources and information. The program, intended to target industries with a history of regulatory problems, was named the Targeted Industries Partnership Program . Agriculture and garment manufacturing were chosen as targeted industries because of their importance for California and their history of regulatory problems.
TIPP is jointly administered by the California Labor Commissioner’s Office and the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division . Participating agencies include the Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement ; the Employment Development Department ; and Cal-OSHA. During any given TIPP activity, up 10 twelve agencies may be involved. This coordinated approach helps to weave together what would otherwise be a haphazard patchwork of regulatory activity. Specific violations addressed by the TD?P inspectors include health and safety, farm-labor contractor laws , workers’ compensation insurance, and regulations pertaining to wage and hour requirements and record keeping. In spite of the importance of these efforts in promoting workplace welfare,hydroponic nft system responsible agencies have inadequate resources for enforcement, education, and epidemiological analysis that could provide insight into the patterns of violations and help focus agency efforts. The main research objective of this project is to characterize agricultural operations that have received notices of violation of health, safety, and labor regulations during 1993 and 1994 through TIPP and to identify patterns and risk factors for violation. Using a database of California farm operations developed and maintained by the California Institute for Rural Studies , we compared operations that received notices of violations through TIPP during 1993 and 1994 with chose that did not. This allowed us to develop a profile of operations at high risk for labor-law violations, identify and characterize risk factors, and describe patterns of violation. In addition, TIPP files were matched against the Licensed Farm Labor Contractor file to identify which TIPP citations were made to licensed farm-labor contractors, Regulatory agencies can use information profiling high-risk operations to target educational and enforcement programs within the agricultural sector. The program brings major benefit for both employees and employers. Farm operators who are in compliance with the law also benefit, because more widespread compliance means they are less likely to be competing with persons reducing operating costs through noncompliance. The state as a whole stands to benefit in that improved compliance brings about safer working conditions, leading to increased productivity and reduced lost-work time, medical expenses, and other associated losses. The general goal of this study was to identify agricultural operations receiving notices of violation through TIPP and compare them with operations that had not received notices of violation.
We linked reports of violations from the TIPP database for 1993 and 1994 to specific agricultural producers contained in a large database of over 37,000 California farm operators developed and maintained by the California Institute for Rural Studies. Through this linkage, we identified those producers with violations and compared this group to producers without violations. The results were used to develop a comparative profile of high-risk producers for the purpose of focusing educational and enforcement resources. We also linked the TIPP files to the CDIR’s Licensed Farm Labor Contractor file to identify which citations had been issued to licensed farm labor contractors. In this manner we were able to identify operations chat had received notices of violation through TIPP in 1993 and 1994 and identify them as farms, licensed farm-labor contractors, or unlicensed farm-labor contractors. For farmers we were able to compare cited operations with those that had not received notices of violation. Using standard statistical techniques, we compared these two groups to develop a profile of operations receiving notices of violation. Reports from the OSHA IMIS database and labor expense data were obtained from the relevant governmental agencies as described in this report.Data collection forms can be designed to facilitate data collection and accurate entry into computer systems for analysis. Design should include appropriate categories of violations- This process should be guided by considerations of how the data will be used. In particular, whether categories are broad and inclusive vs. narrow and precise will depend on how die data will be used from a regulatory stand point. If it is important to distinguish different types of violations, then a greater number of narrower categories will be required. Data forms can be prepared on optically readable forms. Scannable forms have a major advantage in that the completed form can simply be fed into a device that automatically reads the data and enters it into a computer for analysis. This process can save significant time, reduce data errors, and facilitate analysis and report writing. Efficiency could also be improved by Immediate on-site entry into laptop computers; these could also hold useful databases for on-site field use. Th duty of reports could be greatly increased by including further descriptive information relevant for the participating agencies. In the IMIS system, for example, information on number of employees and union status are included. Inclusion of descriptive information deemed relevant by the participating agencies would aid in understanding patterns of violation. Comment: Improved utilization of computers would allow more timely review of data and facilitate planning of agency activities. For example, data we analyzed for this report showed an increased risk of violations among berry producers. However, more recent information, conveyed to us in personal communications by our reviewers during the preparation of this report, suggests that current compliance among strawberry producers is high. Improved use of computers with short turn-around time for data review would allow agencies to react to changes as they occur. An inspection program utilizing an unbiased sample of local operations employing farm workers directly or through contractors would allow agencies to determine how commonly or frequently specific infractions occur. This would provide a truer picture than currently available of infractions among operations and allow agencies to develop educational, preventive, and enforcement strategies based on a more realistic view of infractions within the industry. In contrast, when information is based on complaints or leads, the resulting data represent a group of agricultural operations at high risk for violations; such a group is a biased sample- i-e., it is not representative of all agricultural operations. Similarly, operations that have not been inspected and cited may still have infractions of health-and-safety laws that have simply not been reported. Information on the true prevalence of specific infractions would be invaluable for developing policy and focusing resources, and information on true prevalence can only be obtained from a valid sampling system. A valid, unbiased sampling system ideally would involve random sample selection from a complete list of area operations. Although various state agencies maintain lists of agricultural operations for their purposes , the state does not maintain a comprehensive listing of operations utilizing farm labor. Developing and maintaining such a list requires ongoing commitment of resources.