نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
Introduction[1]
The escalating demand for food, driven by global population growth, poses a significant threat to environmental sustainability. Conventional monoculture agricultural systems, while often profitable in the short term, are increasingly recognized as major contributors to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and heightened vulnerability to climate change and economic fluctuations. In response, integrated agricultural systems, such as agroforestry, which synergistically combine crops, livestock, poultry, and trees, have emerged as a promising pathway toward sustainable intensification. These systems are theorized to enhance ecological resilience through increased biodiversity, improve soil health, and offer greater economic stability by diversifying income sources and reducing dependency on external inputs. This study was therefore designed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of sustainability and economic productivity indicators, comparing mono-dimensional and integrated agricultural systems in two distinct villages within Meshginshahr County, Iran, with a specific focus on ecological health, economic viability, and the critical metric of local food security.
Materials and Methods
This survey-analytical research was conducted in 2023 in two purposively selected villages—Arjaq and Jabdaraq—located in Meshginshahr County, Ardabil Province, Iran. Data collection integrated field observations, in-person interviews with local farmers, and official agricultural census data. To quantitatively assess sustainability, a novel Composite Agricultural Diversity Index (ADI) was constructed, comprising five weighted components: Biodiversity (Shannon-Wiener Index), Functional Diversity, Spatial Diversity, Temporal Diversity, and Resilience (assessed through farmer surveys on system recovery from disturbances). Economic analysis was performed by calculating total costs, income, profit, and profit percentage for each documented agricultural system. Food self-sufficiency was evaluated by comparing the annual production of key food groups within each village against established per capita consumption requirements. Additionally, new indices for land-based and population-based self-sufficiency were developed and calculated to provide a holistic view of local food security.
Results and Discussion
The findings revealed a pronounced superiority of integrated agricultural systems across all evaluated metrics. Ecologically, the most complex system (Arable + Gardening + Livestock + Poultry) achieved the highest Composite Agricultural Diversity Index in both Arjaq (4.718) and Jabdaraq (4.181), far exceeding scores for single-activity systems like sole gardening (1.170) or livestock (0.865). This high ADI signifies greater biodiversity, functional redundancy, and spatial complexity, which directly contribute to enhanced ecosystem resilience against environmental stresses such as pests and drought. Soil quality analysis corroborated these findings, showing superior organic matter content and nutrient levels (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus) in systems incorporating trees and diverse plant cover compared to monoculture arable lands. Economically, the integrated systems demonstrated robust performance. While individual components like poultry sometimes showed high profit percentages, the combined systems (e.g., Arable+Gardening+Livestock) generated significantly higher total absolute profits (e.g., 270.97 million Rials in Arjaq) due to synergistic effects. These synergies included using livestock manure as organic fertilizer, thereby reducing costs for chemical inputs, and utilizing crop residues as animal feed. This resource recycling not only lowered operational expenses but also distributed economic risk across multiple revenue streams, insulating farmers from market or crop-specific failures. The most striking outcome was the disparity in food self-sufficiency. Jabdaraq, with its highly diversified production, achieved complete self-sufficiency, producing surpluses in crucial categories like poultry meat (175% of need), cereals (187%), and garden products (a remarkable 1714%). In stark contrast, Arjaq, despite its focus on lucrative grape production and greater access to irrigation, exhibited significant deficits in animal protein, meeting only 38% of its poultry, 44% of its egg, and 0% of its fish requirements. Its massive surplus in garden products (1589%) was insufficient to compensate for these core nutritional shortfalls, highlighting the risks of over-specialization. Consequently, the composite self-sufficiency index for Jabdaraq (5.08) was more than double that of Arjaq (2.3), underscoring that diversification, rather than mere land or water availability, is the cornerstone of sustainable food security.
Conclusion
In general, multi-dimensional, integrated agricultural systems deliver enhanced ecological sustainability through greater biodiversity and soil health, improved economic profitability and risk mitigation through synergistic resource use, and, most importantly, ensure genuine local food self-sufficiency. the presence of diverse agricultural systems in an area leads to increased economic sustainability and food security, and to some extent compensates for limited access to water. It also reduces the need for external and chemical inputs, which results in greater economic and environmental productivity.
کلیدواژهها English
Authors retain the copyright. This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)
