Scenario Planning for Organic Farming Development in Iran by Applying Cross Impact Balance (CIB) Analysis

Organic farming is a type of ecologically friendly agricultural system that aims to improve human quality of life while reducing environmental impacts. Despite the underlying potentials for developing this system in Iran there was too little extension and, in some respects, a step backward. The purpose of this study is to explain how scenarios for organic agricultural development were constructed using the cross impact balance (CIB) approach to analyze data obtained by an expert panel using the Delphi method. The time horizon in this study was 2026, and the spatial framework was The Islamic Republic of Iran. In two rounds of Delphi, 19 scholars and representatives representing key stakeholders in Iranian organic farming were interviewed using two semi-structured questionnaires in order to identify key factors, as these components form the basis for analyzing and constructing scenarios using the CIB method. In the first round the important factors were asked in five aspects of STEEPV (Social, Technical, Environmental, Economic and Values) as external factors and the factors of the organic farming production system in Iran as internal factors affecting the development of the system. In the second round, by collecting all factors, a questionnaire was constructed to inquire which elements are the most essential and have the greatest impact on others, as well as the percentage of their uncertainties. After discussion, the experts selected 26 external factors and 31 internal factors, and wrote the measure of each factor's importance and uncertainty in front of them. After this round, SPSS software was used to determine the most important factors with the highest importance and highest measure of uncertainty from the experts' perspectives, and four factors were chosen as the basic factors (descriptors) for scenario design. In a separate session, experts used the brain storming method to find the variants of each factor. The descriptors and their variants formed a cross impact matrix (CIM) to ask experts to judge the degree and direction of their impact on variants of other descriptors. Then these values were analyzed using Scenario Wizard software, and four different scenarios for organic farming development in Iran were extracted: defeat in organic policies, gradual approach, current as future, and organic dream.