TITLE:
The Choice to Go Organic: Evidence from Small US Farms
AUTHORS:
Xuanli Liu, Nalini Pattanaik, Mack Nelson, Mohammed Ibrahim
KEYWORDS:
Organics, Barriers, Produce, Organic Farming, Small Farms
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.10 No.12,
December
11,
2019
ABSTRACT: This research examined small farmers’ operational choice in converting to organic farming in the Southern region of the United States. A logistic model fitted to survey data from responses of 456 produce growers found the key determinants of the conversion choices of farmers and offered quantitative impacts of the major influential factors retained in the fitted model. Among them, barriers to the conversion were linked to farmer’s age, risk aversion, years of farming, and the lack of education as well as low yield of organic farming; nevertheless, the model also revealed the existence of stimuli reflecting on access to farmers markets, peer exemplars, and operational scale. The confluence of variables retained partially explained a slow but steady conversion to organic farming in the United States. Besides the broad implication for policy making in the agricultural sector, this study found that organic farming was closely tied to small farms and organic farming could be a back road to the future of small US farms.