Roads accesibility to agricultural crops using gis technology. Methodological aproach

Abstract

The access to agricultural fields represents the main factor which favours their spatial distribution and their mechanized exploitation. In addition to this it valorizes the fields by enabling their intensive cultivation, fast harvesting and product distribution to collecting, processing and sales centres, with a main impact on perishable goods. The short access time to perishable crops enables their delivery in large quantities to the market, without major losses, thus their value increases. The present study analyses the accessibility of agricultural lands included in the high class of favourability for agricultural use, based on GIS techniques, with the purpose of economically valorising the territory by identifying the lots with very good accessibility and high favourability determined by rational exploitation. The following analysis is performed in a highly agricultural area, polarised by three agricultural sales centres and characterised by a low density of European, national and county roads (which offer easy access) while there is a high density of village roads and direct roads to agricultural lots and crops. The methodology of study was structured in two interconnected stages: the SWOT analysis of the present situation in what concerns the road quality and the implementation of a GIS spatial analysis accessibility model based on integrated network analysis in order to identify the main sales centres and the allocation of each agricultural lot to a certain sales centre. Using this analysis, certain hypotheses and proposals were made for the economically valid cultivation of the land and its accessibility as well as for the identification of intermediary collecting and primary sales centres.