The Strategies to use the Abandoned Agricultural Lands around Sanandaj

Agricultural land use change, agricultural lands abuse and abandonment of farms around the cities are of the most important challenges facing agriculture and rural areas. In recent decades, these changes have resulted different social, economic, and environmental consequenses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the strategies to prevent agricultural land use change and the optimal use of agricultural abandoned from the viewpoint of farmers. The statistical population of this research was the farmers of Sanandaj city (N=4900). Sample size is determined using Cochran formula (n = 357)  and a systematic random method is used for sampling process. The data gathering tool is a questionnaire, which is validated by the experts from Kurdistan's Agricultural-Jihad Organization and its reliability is confirmed during a pretest by Alpha Cronbach test and it is 0.88. Structural equation modeling is used to identify the strategies to prevent agricultural land use change through confirmatory factor analysis method. The results showed that the strategies for using the abandoned agricultural lands can be divided in four groups: socio-economic, technical-structural, managerial-monitoring, and legal- policy. Based on the results of a confirmatory factor analysis, from farmers' point of view, the most effective solutions are legal- policy and managerial-monitoring respectively. Legal - policy solutions in the research area, Sanandaj, can affect other factors and, in a large extent, prevent the use of agricultural land around the city. Therefore, it is necessary to manage this problem by establishing basic and transparent laws and enforcing binding policies on land uses around the city with serious planning and monitoring.
Extended Abstract
1-Introduction
 City and village, as the foundations of geographic space, have always had mutual or one-sided links and relationships in the form of population flows, goods, capital, ideas and information. The use of rural spaces by urban residents often involves spatial planning and leisure activities, in order to achieve a leisure and psychological burden, which may be the result of tourism activities in rural areas. This phenomenon often prevails in mountainous and bay areas, especially around big cities and metropolitan areas, which has grown significantly over the last few decades. Today, increasing the value of land in rural areas and the formation of new uses, including tourism development, the creation of second homes, industrial development and so on has doubled the importance of attention to the issue of land use and land conservation. For this reason, in Iran, various plans have been developed and implemented, such as land plot planning, urban development, rural land plot planning, and land consolidation in order to organize land use. Agricultural land use change, agricultural lands abuse and abandonment of farms around the cities are of the most important challenges facing agriculture and rural areas. In recent decades, these changes have resulted different social, economic, and environmental consequenses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the strategies to prevent agricultural land use change and the optimal use of agricultural abandoned from the viewpoint of farmers.
 2-Materials and Methods
 The statistical population of this research was the farmers of Sanandaj city (N=4900). Sample size was determined using Cochran formula (n = 357)  and a systematic random method was used for sampling process. In this way, at first, 9 villages were selected systematically out of the 26 villages in central sector of the sanandaj city, then the proportion of farmers was selected considering the population size of each village. The main instrument of the research at the field stage was a researcher-made questionnaire based on theoretical foundations. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: individual or demographic characteristics (including 12 questions), and solutions to prevent land use change (including 39 items). Questions of the second part were in ordinal scale, which were ranked from very low to very high using a Likert's type scale. The validity of the questionnaire was approved by the experts of Kurdistan's Agricultural-Jihad Organization at the state level and the reliability of the questionaire was confirmed by a Cronbach's alpha test during pre-test which was 0.88. The data processing of 357 questionnaires was performed using descriptive statistics methods such as frequency distribution, percentage and mean, and analytical statistics such as mean compare. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the strategies of preventing agricultural land use change,through confirmatory factor analysis method.
3-Results and Discussion
 The results showed that the strategies to use the abandoned agricultural lands can be divided in four groups: socio-economic, technical-structural, managerial-monitoring, and legal- policy. Based on the results of a confirmatory factor analysis, from farmers' point of view, the most effective solutions are legal- policy and managerial-monitoring respectively. Legal - policy solutions in the research area, Sanandaj, can affect other factors and, in a large extent, prevent the use of agricultural land around the city. Therefore, it is necessary to manage this problem by establishing basic and transparent laws and enforcing binding policies on land uses around the city with serious planning and monitoring.
4-Conclusion
To avoid agricultural land use and the sustainable management of agricultural land, a combination of legal policies and policies should be applied. Among these policies the following can be mentioned: preventing increase the land price along with less burdens for marginal farmers, amending and ratifying new laws to protect and optimize the use of agricultural lands in the margins of cities, unity and integration of management and legislation in the field of agricultural land and natural resources, in particular land abandoned, and the implementation of land surveying. Furthermoreconsidering rural development policies in rural areas face many obstacles and problems such as land consolidation, water supply network, extension training activities and public participation projects, there is a need for more precise planning, monitoring and management in these areas, especially abandoned lands is inevitable.