Climate change and drought have greatly affected the food security of rural families. Regarding to importance of the resilience approach in food security, this study aimed to examine the resiliency determinant factors based on six indicators included income and food access, access to basic services, assets, social safety net, adaptive capacity, and stability. The above-mentioned indicators were extracted from the food and agricultural organization’s resilience index. This research was of the survey type, and data were collected from a sample of population based on a stratified random sampling. The sample population was 270 respondents from the Fars province who faced food insecurity due to drought. Based on the factorial analysis, the model presented in this research had a high predictability of resilience among rural households. The validity and reliability of this model were tested and verified. The results showed that the stability variable was considered the most important resiliency determinant toward food insecurity. Cluster analysis suggested two groups: high- and low-resilience households. The results revealed that more than half of rural families had a lower resilience to food insecurity, while less than 45 percent of rural households in this study had higher resiliency, which was characterized by a series of features. The verified model in this study identified a standard framework for assessing the resiliency of households to cope with food insecurity and to recover from shocks related to drought.

Introduction: Global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic have posed a critical challenge to education and have hampered progress towards sustainability in higher education. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the impact of pandemic crisis management on the sustainability of higher education. Methods: This research was based on a mixed approach and, in terms of the nature of the data, consisted of two qualitative and quantitative phases. Qualitative data based on the grounded theory were collected through semi-structured interviews with 25 university leaders. The statistical population in the quantitative section consisted of 240 employees and faculty members from agricultural faculties in Tehran province, and the resulting data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results: Qualitative data were examined through three phases: open, axial, and selective coding, resulting in the identification of 393 open codes, including 98 ideas across eight primary themes. After validating the model obtained from the qualitative phase, all relationships between variables were confirmed through path analysis. The findings indicated the advancement and enhancement of six factors: the creation of laws and regulations, financial resources, infrastructure, communication and collaboration, human resource management, and social capital, which facilitated the promotion of pandemic crisis management. Likewise, pandemic crisis management affects the sustainability of higher education. Discussion: This research helps to document the pandemic crisis management model of agricultural colleges so that the sustainability of higher education can be achieved through understanding the conditions and strategies of pandemic crisis management. Also, this paper expands the knowledge about the management of the pandemic, which necessitates the sustainability of the functioning of the higher education system.

The institutionalization of participation is a topic that has been discussed in different ways over the last few decades. There are many diverse aspects of the agricultural sector and rural communities that can be identified and used to bring about a major change in agriculture. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one of the participatory and sustainable approaches that can be used in this regard. CSA is a relatively new socioeconomic model for producing food materials, increasing food security, improving the quality of food materials and conserving agricultural land, plants and animals. This research aimed to design a CSA model that was operationalized in Markazi province, Iran, with the aim of increasing food security. It was a survey study applied through a questionnaire. The statistical population (N=110) consisted of all active farmers in Ghazel Dareh village who were selected through the census method. The necessary information was collected through a questionnaire (84 of which were completed and returned) and analyzed using SPSS v. 25 and LISREL. The results showed that economic, socio-institutional, policy-making, educational and infrastructural factors significantly influenced the development of CSA. Infrastructural and socio-institutional factors with impact factors of 0.88 and 0.54 had the largest and smallest effect on CSA, respectively. Finally, since all impact factors were positive, we can say that improving each of these factors could improve the development of CSA in the study area.