Introduction

The agricultural sector has always been supposed by scholars, managers, planners and governments for sustainable rural development. Increasing production scale cannot lead to agricultural progress, per se. The use of processing and complementary industries for greater productivity of agricultural products can result to increased product quality and greater profitability, as well as more employment and ultimately sustainable development of rural areas. However, these industries must be establishing in a favorable place. In rural places, conversion and complementary industries was proposed as a suitable method proposed by researchers for the development to combine both of agriculture and industry sectors. Therefore, it is necessary to first evaluate the different conditions and identify the most suitable place for the construction of processing industries. Secondly, it is very important to introduce the most appropriate type of processing industries and the agricultural crops (agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries, etc.) for these industries to be established. In fact, this study seeks to find out which areas in Minab County has the most suitable situation to establish processing and complementary industries in the agricultural sector?



Methodology

The research indicators were first extracted by studying the background theoretical foundations and the literature, and then the data was obtained from statistical yearbooks of agriculture in Hormozgan Province. Also, for qualitative indicators, the required information was collected by designing a questionnaire consisting of 20 experts familiar with the situation of the studied villages. The TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making technique has been used to prioritize four rural areas in the Central district of Minab County. In this technique, the positive or negative effect of each indicator on the main goal can be considered and according to the weight of each indicator the options can be ranked.



Discussion and conclusion

Minab County divided in four districts: Bandzarak, Tokhoor, Sandrak and Central. In this study, the Central district and its four rural districts (Karian, Tiab, Hoomeh and Goorband) were appointed to be ranked for agricultural processing and complementary industries. In this section, according to the steps of TOPSIS method, it has been tried to prioritize the rural areas of the Central District of Minab County according to the specific indicators for the establishment of agricultural processing and complementary industries. Since the goal is to prioritize the establishment of processing and complementary industries, the indicators are not of equal importance and weight. Thus in order to prioritize rural areas in the Central District of Minab County, the weight of each index was calculated by Shannon entropy method (value between 0 and 1). The highest weight is related to x4 and x5 indexes i.e. the amount of crop production and the amount of horticultural production (production volume per ton). The distances from the best alternative to the worst alternative and the overall score or TOPSIS score, which based on that rural areas are ranked. In fact, the village that gets more overall score has a higher priority for the establishment of agricultural processing and complementary industries. In this case, Karian Village with a score of 0.68, Goorband village with a score of 0.54, Hoomeh village with a score of 0.21 and finally Tiab village with a score of 0.08 are ranked respectively. This is also shown in a diagram in the study. In other words, TOPSIS technique showed that the most important indicators for this are the amount of crop production and the amount of horticultural production (production volume per ton). The amount of production must cost effective for establishment of the industry. Therefore, it was determined that it is better to establish the industry first in the Central District of Minab County, and then in Karian Rural District.