A Determination of the Levels of Agricultural Development and Regional Inequity in Zanjan Province

Iran is among the countries suffering from high internal regional inequities, as regards the issue of development, in general, and agricultural development in particular. Such a situation exists between and also within provinces. So the main objective of this paper is to assess the level of agricultural development in Zanjan Province, and as well to analyze the gap among different regions of the province as regards agricultur development and the related inequities. For the purpose, the levels of agricultural development in 7 counties of this province with respect to population and as well to such agricultural subsectors as: agronomy, horticulture, livestock, water resources, agricultural mechanization as well as agricultural processing industries have been evaluated through utilization of 98 agricultural developmental indices, and use of the technique of "main indicators analysis." The general level of agricultural development is finally thus determined. Upon this basis and in terms of the total combined indices, the counties of Tarom and Zanjan benefited from the highest level of agricultural development, counties of Abhar and Khoramdarreh stood at the medium level, whilst the counties Ijrood, Mahneshan and Khodabandeh experienced the lowest level of development. A comparison of the coefficient of variation also indicated the existence of regional inequity in the agricultural development of Zanjan Province, The results reveal that, Zanjan Province suffers from the highest inequity in terms of processing industry indices whilst the least inequity in population as reflected by population indices.