Available online at www.centmapress.org, Four factors and three farmer groups were identified which significantly differed regarding their attitudes towards animal welfare programs and willingness to participate in them. Authors cited evidence of need to design tailor-made strategies for communicating with farmers about this subject.
12 pages, One of the key questions that concerns policy makers, related to the long term planning of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is the form of agriculture that farmers intend to follow in the future. In order to highlight that question, a sample of producers from the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece were surveyed and analyzed in order to identify and assess the factors that influence farmers’ adoption of organic, conventional or integrated agriculture systems. The paper methodologically applies double-valued logistic regressions, one for each form of agriculture, to the selected sample. Results indicate that producers' training and high awareness of CAP policies are positively correlated with the future adoption of organic farming systems, while the adoption of integrated agriculture depends on producers’ age as well as their positive or negative opinions regarding the conventional agricultural system.
Available online at www.centmapress.org, Results showed that depending on expressed meta-values, respondents had different specific information sources and needs. Online sources were rarely mentioned, the majority of consumers referred to brochures, flyers and interpersonal contacts.
19 pages, The adoption of digital technologies is expected to impact the social sustainability of agriculture, in particular in the case of small and mid-sized family farms in Western Europe. Goal of this research was to assess these impacts, however widely accepted impact assessment schemes of social sustainability are missing. Against this background, a qualitative, two-stage Delphi survey was conducted in order to identify relevant impact categories of the adoption of digital technologies in family-operated small-scale farms of South-West Germany. The participating experts stated, for example, that the adoption of digital technologies on the farm could mean that new business models can be based on the use of digital technologies. However, they also stated that digital technology could overburden farmers, which could hinder digitization in this sector as a whole. Data protection and data security were also issues ranked highly important by the participants in the Delphi Process.
Available online at www.centmapress.org, Describes the type of information regarding food shared on Twitter and what kind of network is established between Twitter users in those cases when the #food in question is associated to a geographical area. Findings highlighted differences between the two networks surveyed, both with regard to the actors involved and to the way in which they share information on Twitter.