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2. Motivations, goals, and benefits associated with organic grain farming by producers in Iowa, U.S
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Han, Guang (author), Arbuckle, J. Gordon (author), and Grudens-Schuck, Nancy (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2020-11-06
- Published:
- United States: Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 204 Document Number: D12517
- Journal Title:
- Agricultural Systems
- Journal Title Details:
- 191
- Notes:
- 14 pages., CONTEXT The U.S. has the world's largest organic food market. However, low domestic production and a low adoption rate of organic grain farming limit the overall development of this sector. Multiple organic stakeholders have called for a better understanding of cognitive and motivational aspects of farmers' decision-making processes to help policymakers, agricultural scientists, and extension practitioners to work more effectively with farmers to explore and adopt organic grain production. OBJECTIVE This paper assesses farmers' adoption motivations, long-term goals, and perceived benefits to examine the congruence between initial motivations, long-term goals, and current perceived benefits. METHODS We employed a sequential mixed-method approach that first interviewed organic farmers in Iowa, U.S. Then developed and administered a statewide survey for the organic farmers. Survey data were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis, paired-samples t-tests, and heteroskedasticity-robust regression models. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS We identified five highly-rated motivations for farmers to adopt organic grain: 1) profitability, 2) personal safety, 3) natural resources stewardship, 4) consumers and public health, and 5) honor and tradition. We found organic farmers' long-term goals are strongly orientated to both productivism and stewardship but less strongly oriented to civic-mindedness. This research assessed five areas of benefits associated with organic grain farming: 1) economic benefit, 2) addressed health concerns, 3) environmental natural resources, 4) values and beliefs validation, and 5) social benefit. This study found the benefits farmers experienced by adopting organic grain farming aligned with most of their original adoption motivations and long-term goals, except for serving the motivation of consumer and public health concerns.
3. Organic profitability around the world
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Reganold, John (author)
- Format:
- Presentation
- Publication Date:
- 2016-02-25
- Published:
- International
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 156 Document Number: D07437
- Notes:
- Presentation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Outlook Forum, Arlington, Virginia, February 25, 2016. 17 pages.
4. Towards sustainable consumption: Keys to communication for improving trust in organic foods
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Vega-Zamora, Manuela (author), Torres-Ruiz, Francisco Jose (author), and Parras-Rosa, Manuel (author)
- Format:
- Online journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2019-04
- Published:
- Spain: Science Direct
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10293
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Cleaner Production
- Journal Title Details:
- 216 : 511-519
- Notes:
- 9 pages., Via online journal., Lack of trust is thought to be one of the most significant barriers to the consumption of organic foods, which is an important dimension of sustainable behaviour. Building trust in organic foods is the central objective of this paper. Based on information processing models focusing on what message to transmit and how, and on the premise that to improve trust, two different dimensions (functionality and authenticity) must be managed simultaneously, this paper analyzes the comparative effectiveness of different combinations of message arguments, forms of appeal and sources on consumer trust. To this end, an experiment was designed with a total of 800 participants, in which 36 different treatments were tested. The results show strong interactions between the three variables considered and suggest that the most effective combinations for building trust are: the health argument put across by an expert, the authenticity argument transmitted by a producers’ union, the elitist argument made by an expert and lastly, the social argument transmitted by a public authority, using an emotional form of appeal in all four cases. These results serve to complete the previous literature on the subject, in which communication activities are recommended but the questions of what to say, how to say it and who should say it are not specifically addressed.