Reforming the 1405 Budget: From Cost Accounting to Food and Biological Security Governance

Even with abundant resources, without choosing the right path we will not reach our destination. The 1405 national budget is being drafted at a time when the country is simultaneously facing economic, environmental, public-health, and food-security challenges. Reforming this budget must move beyond a short-term, cost-centered approach and toward long-term, security-oriented investment.

Food Security and Biological Threats: The Budget’s Missing Link

Food security means that people have access, at all times, to sufficient, safe, and sustainable food. This is not merely an agricultural issue; it is directly tied to national security, public health, and social stability.

In recent years, the agricultural sector has faced several structural weaknesses:

• Heavy dependence on imported animal feed inputs

• Severe soil degradation and declining rangeland productivity

• Weak management of animal and plant diseases

• Insufficient attention to emerging biological threats

Biological threats include livestock diseases, pests, emerging pathogens, and the impacts of climate change. If these threats are not addressed in the budget, their costs will multiply and manifest as national crises.

Supra-Governmental Budgeting: A Necessity, Not a Choice

One chronic weakness of the budgeting system is excessive centralization within government. When planning and budgeting are confined to executive agencies alone, the knowledge of universities, the capacity of the private sector, preventive-security capabilities, and local community experience are ignored.

A supra-governmental approach means:

• Policy-making through cross-sector councils with university participation

• Implementation with the private sector and cooperatives

• Oversight with active involvement of civil society

Its advantages include:

• Greater transparency and accountability

• Fewer costly decision-making errors

• More efficient use of resources

• Integration of scientific and indigenous knowledge

• Strengthened public trust

Many countries have shown that participatory budgeting allows limited resources to be spent more precisely and effectively.

Lessons from Successful Global Experiences

One of the most important examples is Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative, launched in 2005 to restore around 100 million hectares of degraded land. To date, tens of millions of hectares—equivalent to 4.7 times the size of Iran—have been restored, creating millions of local jobs.

Key lessons include:

• Governments were not the sole actors

• Local communities played the central role

• Simple, low-cost, locally adapted technologies were used

This experience demonstrates that combating desertification is not a dream, but a managerial choice.

Iran’s Rangelands and Deserts: A Forgotten Asset

Iran covers approximately 164 million hectares, of which:

• 86–90 million hectares are rangelands

• Only about 10 million hectares are in good condition

• Around 32 million hectares are desert areas

Restoring rangelands could solve a large portion of livestock feed shortages, dust storms, and even unemployment.

Strategic Proposal

Rain-fed rangeland restoration through:

• Seed-dispersing drones

• Planting resilient native species

• Participatory grazing management with herders

This approach is low-cost, fast, and proven successful in arid regions.

Livestock Feed Imports: An Urgent Review

Last year, approximately $16 billion in subsidized foreign exchange was allocated to feed imports—an enormous figure that reflects a structural weakness.

It is recommended to:

• Redirect part of these funds to domestic feed production

• Treat rangeland restoration as a sustainable feed source

• Reduce dependence on preferential exchange rates

This shift benefits producers, strengthens food security, and preserves foreign-exchange reserves.

Air Pollution, Disease, and Hidden Costs

Air pollution—responsible for about 15% of annual deaths—is a major cause of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and reduced life expectancy. The costs of treatment, disability, and mortality far exceed the cost of prevention.

Proposed measures include:

• Expanding green belts around cities

• Reducing pollution sources

• Increasing vaccination and preventive care

• Public education and consumption-pattern change

Every unit spent on prevention saves multiple units in treatment costs.

When Food Security Becomes the Front Line of National Health

When food security and biological-threat management are prioritized in governance and budgeting, many prevalent diseases naturally decline. Safe, sustainable, and biologically clean food addresses the root causes of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, immune, and metabolic diseases. The result is a win-win outcome: healthier families, reduced government health expenditures, and national resources redirected from treatment toward prevention and long-term development—where public health becomes the nation’s greatest asset.

Implementation and Public Accountability

To operationalize these proposals in the coming budget year, the government and parliament must:

1. Establish clear, non-transferable budget lines for food security, vaccine production, and biological-threat response

2. Enact binding legal provisions mandating collaboration with the private sector, universities, and civil society

3. Implement regular, public progress-reporting systems

Effective accountability should be pursued through legal and social channels, involving academics, scientific associations, professional unions, media, and civic organizations.

Priorities for Biological Threats

• Prevention and early detection

• Self-sufficiency in strategic vaccines and medicines

• Food-chain safety from farm to table

• Strengthening human capital and indigenous technology

• Supra-governmental governance and social participation

Strategic Conclusion: What Should the 1405 Budget Be?

The future budget must:

• Place food security at its core

• Take biological threats seriously

• Be participatory and supra-governmental

• Strengthen domestic production instead of imports

• Treat human health and the environment as investments, not costs

Budget reform is future reform. If we make the right decisions today, we will pay less tomorrow—and build a stronger Iran.