Constraints in production and marketing of pistachio in Iran and the policies concerned

Abstract: Pistachio is one of the most important agricultural crop in Iran. The country earns sizable income from pistachio export. To be globally competitive, the production and trade of pistachio must be economically viable especially in long run. This paper aims to analyze the constraints in production and marketing of Pistachio in Iran. Necessary data were collected through personal interview of randomly selected sample of farmers and exporters/ processors. One hundred farmers and ten processor/ exporters interviewed in Kerman province and Tehran city (Iran), in the crop year 2003-04. The Garret ranking technique was adopted to identify the constraints. Farmers and traders were asked to rank the problems considered. Farmers ranked 14 problems into 9 different categories. Differences between scores adopted for different categories were low and they varied from 74 to 87, indicating that all the problems are important from producer's point of views. On the other hand, traders ranked only 12 given problems among 17. They classified each and every problem into a distinct category. Score variations were comparatively high varying from 19 to 60 indicating that there is significant difference between different categories of problems. The results of tabular analysis of export data showed that pistachio industry of Iran was facing a negative growth rate of production, productivity, export quantity and export value during the period 1991-2002.