the explanation of appropriate strategies and mechanism for achieving sustainable agriculture

the evidence from experiences and projects have revealed that favourable policy environment, resource conserving technologies, enabling external institutions, and local institutions and groups are the components and the preconditions needed for the successful implementation of sustainable agriculture. in this context, the mission of government is providing an appropriate institutional environment for the development and enforcement mechanisms of sustainable agriculture. accordingly, in the present article, agricultural stockholders’ viewpoints including official experts, scientists, researchers, and business about strategies as a set of rules and devices within a mechanism for sustainable agricultural development have been explored. stratified random sampling was used to identify 95 respondents. content validity and reliability of research instrument were examined using a panel of experts and cronbach's alpha, respectively. factor anlysis was employed to determine the strategies of sustainable agricultural development. overall, results showed that strategies in the three categories including: enabling – e.g. supportive and extension practices, developing social capital, and encouraging institutional trust; and enforcing – e.g. establishing regulations and programs, agri-environmental scheme and labeling and information, and encouraging – e.g. providing non-agricultural knowledge services such as financial incentives key means for encouraging sustainable agriculture development in iran.