A comparative Study of the Role of Sugar Factory on the Cropping Pattern: A Case Study of Malegaon Factory (India) & Karun Agro-Industry (Iran) Command Areas Arzjani Zahra Islamic Azad University, Branch of Tehran Central, Faculty of Geography, Tehran, Iran. Email: zarzjani@yahoo.com Abstract The pattern of cropping is a major feature of the agricultural land use in an area. Systematic understanding of cropping pattern changes is very important, (i) for the farmers to get better or best possible returns, (ii) for the entrepreneurs to decide the optimal or near optimal locations and capacities of new agro-based plants and factories, (iii) for the government and law-makers to check that over production of some farm products does not result in under production of some other ones, thus ensuring the required overall balance. Thus this topic is most essential especially in the case agro-based economies in order to have an overall development and balanced growth. With the establishment of sugarcane factory, sugarcane found a wider use and enjoyed a further commercial boom. In fact, amongst the multi-varietals crops, sugarcane alone held the prospects of an assured and stable income to the farmers, which led to an extensive acreage under sugarcane plantation, thus substantial changes in cropping pattern over decades. As the sugar factory has played such a dominant role in transforming the agricultural land use of the area in a large way, it is worth reviewing how its establishment has been beneficial to the farmers. The present paper attempts to assess the role ofsugar factory in the cropping pattern changes with the help of two case studies and comparisons. The two sugar factories considered for this study are located in Karun (Iran) and Malegaon (India). Top Keywords Crop pattern, Sugar factory, Distribution, Karun, Malegaon. Top |