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.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08811
Notes:
Pages 71-93 in Patrick D. Murphy, The media commons: globalization and environmental discourses. United States: University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield. 192 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 197 Document Number: D09455
Notes:
Online via blog. 14 pages., Interview with Lynn Miller, publisher of The Small Farmer's Journal. Part of a series: "Stewards: stories and perspectives on American agriculture."
Online journal. 2 pages., Author comments on meanings of these terms: sustainable agriculture, factory farm, family farm, local food, and organic and natural.
Survey and auction results reveal a lack of understanding of the label's meaning as well as a disconnect between the label's function (involving production methods) and consumers' motivations for buying organic (e.g., support for a local sustainable food system).
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.
Fiore, Mariantonietta (author), Silvestri, Raffaele (author), Contò, Francesco (author), Pellegrini, Giustina (author), and Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Largo Papa Giovanni Paolo II, 1, Foggia, Italy
Department of Economic Science, University of Bari, Largo Abbazia Santa Scolastica 53, Bari, Italy
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2017-01-20
Published:
Italy: Elsevier Ltd.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 162 Document Number: D08100
