Application of analytic hierarchy process for evaluation Western region of Ukraine with the purpose of organic land use development

Abstract

The purpose of the research described in this article is to test the method of hierarchies for assessing the territory according to the selected criteria and to determine the most attractive area for the development of organic land use in the Western region of Ukraine, which is suitable for organic land use. The interest of agricultural producers in organic products comes from a stable trend towards growth of the global organic market, and the significant potential of our country as one of the main producers and exporters of organic raw materials and products. The method of hierarchies was chosen to provide the accurate evaluation of the areas for developing organic land use, as it allows to gradually break down the problems into more and more simple components and set the priority of criteria. That is, to assess the importance of individual indicators in the further processing of the sequence of judgments based on the results of pairwise comparisons, which are then expressed numerically, as well as to evaluate alternative solutions and find the best of them. Taking into account the recommendations of scientists and the requirements of the standards according to which organic producers work, in order to build a hierarchical structure of indicators of agricultural land selection there were used ecological-toxicological and agrochemical indicators of its condition. There were derived normalized ratings for each criterion and checked their reliability by the index and the ratio of consistency. There was made a comparison for each criterion, for all studied alternatives and the corresponding generalized ratings were calculated. A matrix of global priorities is constructed, which characterizes the potential of the considered areas. According to the results of the assessment by the hierarchy method, the greatest potential for the introduction of organic land use in the Western region of Ukraine is in Lviv, Khmelnytsky and Ternopil regions. There is the largest area of agricultural land which is potentially suitable for organic production with the least risk and greater economic efficiency in the above-mentioned regions. Further research will focus on the use of the hierarchy method to evaluate the potential of the territory in terms of areas of the region on a wider list of criteria, taking into consideration the suggestions and priorities of the farmer (the potential investor).