Sustainability of Rainfed Wheat Production: A Case Study in Southwest Iran Using Fuzzy Modeling

This study was carried out to evaluate the sustainability of rainfed wheat production in the Khuzestan province, Southwest Iran. 377 farmers were chosen; 139 and 42 farmers from two conventional and 121 and 75 farmers from two conservation tillage systems. To reach the goal of the study, three primary and a final fuzzy models were designed to obtain mechanization, agronomic and socio-economic sustainability indices. The result showed that the highest and lowest sustainability indices belonged to socio-economic and agronomic factors, respectively. The socio-economic indices reached to 80 while agronomic indices reached to only 22. It was recommended that soil sampling is essential to optimize fertilizer consumption and yield improvement to enhance agronomic sustainability indices. Since the highest indices came from conservation tillage systems, it was suggested that these two systems are suitable for the rainfed production in the region. Nonetheless, more support to increase farm machines is recommended to reduce waiting time to complete farming operations and encourage farmers to use them.