Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 70, Issue 7, 15 May 2011, Pages 1406-1414
Ecological Economics

Analysis
Adoption of organic farming: Are there differences between early and late adoption?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.03.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Based on the fact that not all farmers adopt a technology at the same time, it is argued in this paper that the distinction between groups is important because early, medium and late adopters respond differently to economic and non-economic factors when they consider whether to take up organic farming or not. The individual effects on adoption between the groups are identified by the use of multinomial logit analysis. The results provide evidence that there are significant differences in the characteristics between the adopter groups. The findings also reveal that the factors that affect adoption play a different role for early, medium and late adopters, particularly with regard to farming intensity, age, information gathering as well as attitudes of the farmer. More specifically, early adopters were the youngest to adopt organic farming and their decisions were found to be less profit related compared to other groups. Late adoption is constrained by risk considerations, while environmental attitudes and social learning were identified to be important determinants for all adopter groups. Overall, the findings strongly suggest, that for policy measures to be effective, the current state of diffusion has to be taken into account.

Research Highlights

► Differences in early, medium and late adoption of organic farming are examined. ► The adopter groups differ significantly in certain farm and farmer characteristics. ► Many factors that affect adoption play a different role for the adopter groups.

Introduction

Organic farming is considered by some to offer solutions to the problems associated with conventional agriculture such as biodiversity loss, nitrate pollution, animal welfare concerns, surplus production or food safety (Häring et al., 2004, Lampkin, 1994, Lynggaard, 2006, Rigby et al., 2001, Van Mansvelt and Mulder, 1993). Thus, the promotion of organic farming has become an essential element of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and several European Member States are eager to increase the size of their organic sectors. This began with the MacSharry reform1 in 1992, which first introduced payments for environmentally friendly farming (including organic farming). Next, the Mid Term review of Agenda 2000 concluded in 2003 with a fundamental reform that involved decoupling of payments from production (CEC, 2002). This encourages extensive farming, therefore further supporting the switch to organic farming. However, regardless of substantial policy support, the organic sector still represents only a small portion of the total utilizable agricultural area (UAA) in most European countries, averaging 4% at the end of 2007 (Willer et al., 2009). Nevertheless, organic farming has been available to the farmer long before it received policy support. Thus, it is crucial that the current diffusion of the sector is accounted for when attempting to explain uptake decisions.

For organic farming to be effective, policy makers require an understanding of what persuades conventional farmers to switch to organic farming. Organic farming shares similarities with other agricultural technologies in terms of the adoption and diffusion process. The uptake of new technologies or farming practices has attracted considerable interest over the years. Hence, there is a vast literature on the adoption and diffusion of technologies in agriculture (Feder et al., 1985). Nevertheless, the majority of these studies tend to focus on the classic comparison between adopters and non-adopters of a technology (e.g. Burton et al., 2003, Dadi et al., 2004, DeSouza Filho et al., 1999), with very few empirical studies investigating differences between early and late adoption of new technologies in general and organic farming in particular.

Initially, rural sociologists studied the diffusion of technologies. Cumulative adoption was described with an S-shaped curve which results from the fact that only few farmers adopt the new technology in the early stage of the diffusion process (Rogers, 1962). At this stage, only a minority of farmers have acquired full information about the potential advantages of the technology, hence the pace of adoption is slow. Moreover, fear of possible risks associated with the new technology enhances farmers' reluctance to adopt. However, the degree of risk reduces as more farmers adopt, so that the rate of adoption increases. Adoption increases gradually and begins to level off, ultimately reaching an upper ceiling. Obviously, not all individuals in a social system adopt a technology at the same time and based on that, Rogers (1962) divided adopters into five adopter groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. In describing the characteristics of these groups, he suggested that differences exist between adopters at different stages of the distribution curve.

Against this background, this study investigates differences between early, medium and late adopters of organic farming and more importantly, whether the factors affecting uptake changed with ongoing diffusion influenced by policy support. The identification of these determinants aims to contribute to an improved understanding of the adoption process and the findings can thereby help to promote the adoption of organic farming.

Section 2 gives a brief overview of the organic sector in Ireland; Section 3 provides a review of relevant literature. Section 4 outlines the underlying research hypotheses, while Section 5 explains the use of a multinomial logit model in the context of early, medium or late adoption of organic farming. Section 6 describes the data set, followed by the presentation and discussion of the results in Section 7. Finally, Section 8 provides some concluding remarks.

Section snippets

Development of Organic Farming in the Republic of Ireland2

Most of the Directives that followed Ireland's entry into the EEC in 1973 concentrated on stimulating agricultural output and supporting farm incomes (Emerson and Gillmor, 1999). The rural economic and social benefits brought about by the modernisation of Irish agriculture were substantial but there have also been detrimental impacts on the rural environment (Bleasdale and Sheehy-Skeffington, 1995). However, from the early 1980s the CAP has been under increasing public pressure to reform its

Development of Relevant Literature

Early research of technology uptake focused on the diffusion process and was undertaken initially by rural sociologists. Ryan and Gross, 1943, Rogers, 1962 conducted studies on the diffusion of hybrid corn in Iowa. They observed the S-shaped adoption curve and identified networks of information exchanges between adopters and non-adopters as critical for the diffusion process. The results were used by extension agents to promote new technologies and Ruttan (1996, p.56) claims that “one of the

The Adoption and Diffusion of Organic Farming — Hypotheses

The previous outline of relevant literature in combination with the description of the contextual setting of the organic sector in Ireland led to the following set of hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1

Significant differences in the farm (i.e. structural) and farmer (i.e. socioeconomic and personal) characteristics between non-adopters, early, medium and late adopters of organic farming can be expected. This arises as a consequence of either non-adoption or adoption at different stages of the diffusion process.

Hypothesis 2

It is

Methodology

Given the assertion that over time there are more than just two identified groups — adopters and non-adopters — requires a more refined distinction of adopters. Therefore, different adopter groups were derived based on the diffusion process, grouped by the date of implementation of relevant policy reforms. Utilising information about the date when farmers adopted organic farming, it was possible to classify adopters into early (‘Pioneers’), medium (‘Followers’) and late adopters (‘Laggards’) of

Survey Data

The study is based on a nationwide survey of organic and conventional farmers in Ireland, which was conducted between July and November 2008. For the organic farmers complete address lists were available from the organic certification bodies3 and a survey was sent to each farmer on the list. A response rate of 40% was achieved following an announcement of the survey in the Irish Farmers' Journal newspaper and one reminder

Comparison of Adopter Groups

Close inspection of Table 2 reveals some notable differences between the adopter groups, which were confirmed using statistical tests. The results of the statistical tests are shown in Table 3. In terms of farm characteristics, non-adopters have significantly larger farms (t =  6.70; p = 0.00) and a higher livestock density (t =  5.89, p = 0.00) than adopters of organic farming.

Looking at the age of the farmer at adoption, non-adopters are significantly older than adopters (t =  3.55, p = 0.00), and

Concluding Remarks

This paper aims to improve our understanding of the adoption of organic farming by taking the diffusion process into account. By utilising information on the date of conversion, the study moves beyond the classic comparison of adopters and non-adopters to a more a refined distinction of non-adopters, early, medium and late adopters. The use of multinomial logit analysis allows for the investigation of factors that are unique to each group. Thereby, we explore whether characteristics related to

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Scheme for funding this research. This paper benefited substantially from the comments of two anonymous referees for which we are grateful.

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