ANBAR JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

Abstract

Cereal crops are considered as an important strategic crops in the world especially wheat crop, it occupy the first rank in comparison with other crops in the world including Iraq due to its importance as main source of human food and it contain high proportion of protein and calories. In spite the circumstances of Iraq appropriate to be a specialized in its cultivation the wheat, but it is not self-sufficient in wheat and Iraq imports large quantities of it fulfill the need in domestic consumption. That the self-sufficiency of the production of this crop depends on the most important factor is the productivity, which is affected by several factors in the forefront of deployment technologies modern. The objective of the research is to study impact laser land leveling as a new technique on wheat crop productivity, depending on cross sectional sample for the agricultural season 2015-2016 in five governorates covered by the national program for the development of cultivation of wheat in Iraq (Al-Najaf, Al-Qadisiya, Kerbela, Wasit, and Baghdad), the total sample size was 384 farmers covered by the program, 192 farmers who have used laser land leveling technique, 192 farmers who have used traditional methods in land leveling.
The research used production function to identify the impact of the use laser land leveling technique on wheat crop productivity. The results showed that estimation of joint production function for the wheat crop through dummy variable that the total factor productivity in the farms that used laser land leveling technique higher than that of the farms that used traditional methods in land leveling by 30%, and the sum of elasticity's were 1,616 which shows that the function has an increasing return to scale. The research recommended an increase of published the use laser land leveling technique, and to do direct farmers adopt it, which has achieved an increase in the productivity of the crop, an increase in profits which aims to farmers, and reducing losses in the irrigation water, and to provision of devices laser land leveling technique by the stakeholders since commensurate with the cultivated areas wheat subsidized prices.