IntroductionWheat and barley are important strategic crops that constitute the staple food of the world population including Iranian people. Given the role of these crops in the household food basket, food safety and self-sufficiency in the production of these crops can be an important and valuable step towards economic independence. Increasing agricultural production due to the use of chemical inputs causes serious damage to the environment. Therefore, any plan and policy to increase

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... , in addition to technical and economic aspects, must also be analyzed from an environmental perspective. Considering the importance of this issue, the present study aims to investigate the sustainability of rainfed wheat and barley production using the multifunctional ecological footprint (EF). The results can provide useful information to agricultural planners and policymakers.Materials and MethodsTo analyze sustainability, data from Agricultural Statistics of 2017 and the statistics published in domestic databases were used. In the agricultural sector, the footprint indicator should reflect the type of agricultural operations and land use. Accordingly, the EF is divided into two parts: direct and indirect parts of the footprint. The direct footprint indicates the amount of land, buildings, forests, and rangelands for crop production that is defined as the amount of bio-productive area. The indirect footprint represents the amount of bio-productive land used to absorb the amount of CO2 emitted during crop production and agricultural operations.Other aspects and benefits of EF are the use of different functional units that can provide researchers with broader analytical backgrounds. For this purpose, evaluating EF based on a ton of crops, 10,000 Rials income and benefits in the field were also calculated using divided EF by each of the different functional units.Results and DiscussionConcerning rainfed wheat production, Alborz, Mazandaran, and Golestan provinces had the highest emissions by 1632, 1140 and 860 kgCO2eq, res [...]