Location-based planning for sustainable agro-processing industries using land suitability assessment and DANP-VIKOR technique

Establishing agro-processing industries in areas with suitable ecological potentials can help to avoid waste of resources. Lack of process industries, along with the transportation difficulties and market regulations, has led to farmers abandoning their crops due to the absence of an adequate market, and consumers are faced with losses due to the declining supply of products and price increases. This paper aims to determine the procedure to locate suitable process industries based on ecological resources and agricultural development criteria. Agricultural development needs a paradigm shift to an ecological intensification approach to understand the behavior of agro-processing industries on the environment. Ecological suitability assessment of the agro-processing development is considered as the foundation for prioritization, applying some critical ecological criteria. For the socioeconomic, a combination of DEMATEL-ANP techniques is applied. Priority assessment of agro-industries development carried out using VIKOR. By overlaying the appropriate layers of socioeconomic on ecologically suitable areas, suitable locations for agro-process industries are obtained. The results have emphasized that sustainable land-use planning for agro-processing industries should be based on ecological requirements, and suitable areas located in some zones with suitable infrastructures as well as ecological qualification.