This study was designed to evaluate the role of organic farming in improving food security from the perspective of farmers in the Fars province of Iran. The research method was practical in terms of its purpose, non-experimental in terms of the data collection, and correlational in terms of the data analysis. The study population comprised 622 farmers who were members of plant pathology clinics in Fars province of which 187 of them were selected as the sample size by the use of Cochran’s formula through a proportional stratified sampling method. The research tool was a questionnaire for which validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (0.704–0.982). The results revealed that farmers (45.5%) viewed their food security at an average level. The estimated standardized regression coefficients in the model showed that, from the farmers’ perspective, the most effective capabilities in improving food security were technical (0.747), health and safety (0.735), and the optimization of production (0.628), respectively.

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.

Purpose: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is an important means of boosting the agricultural sectors of developing economies. The first necessary step to formulate effective public policies to encourage agricultural FDI inflow to a host country is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the main determinants of FDI inflow to the agricultural sector, which is the main objective of the present study.Design/methodology/approach: In view of this, we take a comprehensive approach to exploring the macroeconomic and institutional determinants of FDI inflow to the agricultural sector by examining a large panel data set on agricultural FDI inflows of 37 countries, investigating both groups of developed and developing countries, incorporating a large list of potentially relevant macroeconomic and institutional variables, and applying panel-data econometric models and estimation structures, including pooled, fixed-effects and random-effects regression models.Findings: The general pattern of our findings implies that the degree of openness of an economy has a negative effect on FDI inflows to agricultural sectors, suggesting that the higher the degree of openness in an economy, the lower the level of agricultural protection against foreign trade and imports, and thus the less incentive for FDI to inflow to the agricultural sector of the economy. Additionally, our results show that economic growth (as an indicator of the rate of market-size growth in the host economy) and per-capita real GDP (as an indicator of the standard of living in the host country) are both positively related to FDI inflows to agricultural sectors. Our other results suggest that agricultural FDI tends to flow more to developing countries in general and more to those with higher standards of living and income levels in particular.Originality/value: FDI inflow has not received much attention with respect to the identification of its main determinants in the context of agricultural sectors. Additionally, there are very few panel-data studies on the determinants of FDI, and even more surprisingly, there are no such studies on the main determinants of FDI inflow to the agricultural sector. We have taken a comprehensive approach by studying FDI inflow variations across countries as well as over time.

Rural women in the Northern Iran were surveyed in order to explore their perception about the factors that influence them in the entrepreneurial activities. The methodology used in this study involved a combination of descriptive and quantitative research. The total population was 247 rural women entrepreneurs in the Provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Golestan. Based on the results of the study, 67% of variance in perceptions of rural women about the factors influencing them in developing their entrepreneurial activities can be explained by education, motivation, economic and psychological/cognitive factors. The results also show that there is need for more training and education of rural women in improving their entrepreneurial activities.