Assessing the Effectiveness of Guaranteed Purchasing Policy on Stabilizing Wheat Production in Iran

Introduction Wheat as a staple food of the Iranian people plays a special and essential role in ensuring the food security of the country. Therefore, due to the importance of wheat consumption in the country, several protection policies have been implemented to improve the self-sufficiency of this crop. However, official statistics show that despite the efforts made, the stable production of wheat in Iran remains far from reliable. Hence, for many years a significant portion of the country's wheat consumed is supplied by imports. Therefore, considering the importance of identifying dynamic processes in the wheat production and wheat supply chain in Iran such as climate change and population growth, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a guaranteed purchase policy in stabilizing wheat production for the time horizon of 2025 as a long-term period. . Results and discussion The results showed that the adoption of a guaranteed purchase policy in addition to encouraging farmers to allocate arable lands to wheat planting also influences their derived demand for allocating production factors. In this case, with the proper implementation of the policy, in addition to a minimal fluctuation of the area under cultivation, the limitation of the demand for production factors by the farmers is minimal and has the least possible fluctuation. Therefore, the results showed that the wheat yield fluctuation would also be as low as possible under this condition. In the following, the results showed that the total volatility of wheat production in the country will be minimal with the proper implementation of this policy and in the time horizon of 2025 if the guaranteed purchase policy is properly implemented, the average wheat production in the country will be about 12 million tons per year. Based on the results, according to the country's population growth process in the 2025 time horizon, an average of about 9.8 million tons of wheat is needed each year for bread production. In addition, about 2 million tons of wheat will be needed each year for the industrial sector. Thus, in the time horizon of 2025, an average of about 12 million tons of wheat would be needed each year. However, domestic production of wheat after deducting self-consumption, seed production, and process loss would eventually cover about 9.5 million tons of total demand. In this condition, on average, about 84 percent of the country's total consumption of wheat would be provided from domestic production per year. Suggestion According to the results, focusing on improving productivity in wheat production in the country with the aim of enhancing the yield of this crop is an important goal that by investing more in agricultural research policies as a complement to the purchase policy can guarantee a stable self-sufficiency. Therefore, in this study, it is suggested that in order to stabilize wheat production in the country, first, the maximum potential of guaranteed purchasing policy should be implemented and, secondly, policies related to wheat yield improvement should be taken into consideration. In this context, future research needs to address the question of how much production elasticity and supply of wheat and the index of self- sufficiency of this product will be due to technological and research changes in yield improvement.