Development a Framework for Assessing the Sustainability of Agricultural Projects Applying for the Agricultural Bank's Credits

The facilities allocated to agricultural projects can play a key role in the sustainable development of agriculture if they are subjected to a detailed economic, social and environmental assessment. The purpose of the research was to provide a framework for evaluating the sustainability of agricultural projects applying for the Agricultural Bank facilities. The statistical population included the faculties and facility experts of the Agricultural Bank. Using a targeted sampling, 30 people were selected includes: 15 university faculties with expertised in sustainable agriculture and 15 facilites experts in the supervision and various branches of the Agricultural Bank of West Azarbaijan Province. The analytical hierarchical process method was used with two scenarios of experts and faculties. In order to identify and weight the sustainability criteria and sub-criteria of agricultural projects, a questionnaire tool was used. Also, three selected agricultural projects were considered for sustainability evaluation. Based on the results, the inconsistency rate (CR) value for both faculties and experts was calculated as 0.00, which was less than 0.1, so the consistency of the results was confirmed. A combined economic, social and environmental index was introduced to evaluate the alignment of agricultural projects with sustainable development. The results indicated that university faculties prioritize environmental issues in the evaluation of projects, while experts consider economic issues to be more important. In both scenarios the project's financial resources, social capital and water consumption from the economic, social and environmental aspects had the most weights in the evaluation of agricultural sustainability. In addition, the greenhouse banana project is the first priority of sustainability and the projects of growing rose cut flowers and hydroponic cucumbers were in the next ranks, respectively. Therefore, if the allocation of facilities is done in the same order and share, it will have the least negative economic, social and environmental effects.