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Organic farmers’ motivations and challenges for adopting conservation agriculture in Europe

Casagrande, Marion; Peigne, Joséphine; Payet, Vincent; Mäder, Paul; Sans, F. Xavier; Blanco-Moreno, José Manuel; Antichi, Daniele; Barberi, Paolo; Beeckmann, Annelies; Bigongiali, Federica; Cooper, Julia; Dierauer, Hansueli; Gascoyne, Kate; Grosse, Meike; Heß, Jürgen; Kranzler, Andreas; Luik, Anne; Peetsmann, Elen; Surböck, Andreas; Willekens, Koen and David, Christophe (2015) Organic farmers’ motivations and challenges for adopting conservation agriculture in Europe. Organic Agriculture, online, pp. 1-15.

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Document available online at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13165-015-0136-0


Summary

Conservation agriculture and organic farming are considered as promising sustainable agricultural system for producing food, while minimizing environmental impacts. Despite an increasing number of experimental data on organic conservation practices and various studies dealing with the adoption of conservation agriculture by farmers, none of those studies have specifically addressed conservation agriculture adoption under organic conditions in Europe. We carried out a survey with 159 farmers located in 10 European countries. These farmers had applied at least two of the following conservation practices: (i) no-tillage, (ii) reduced tillage and (iii) green manures. Each farmer assessed socio-economic, agronomic and environmental motivations and problems for each conservation practice, using a Likert scale. For each conservation practice, we ranked motivations and problems and carried out a principal component analysis, followed by clustering to identify groups of farmers. Independent of the conservation practices, the most important motivations were related to soil fertility preservation and challenges were mainly linked to crop management, machinery and yield performances. For all conservation practices, we identify three groups of farmers that shared the same type of motivations and challenges across Europe: “soil conservationists,” “agro-technically challenged farmers,” and “indifferent farmers.” Soil conservationist farmers were strongly motivated by soil preservation and minimizing environmental impacts. Agro-technically challenged farmers mainly expressed agronomic problems and challenges. There were no clear effects of location or farm characteristics explaining these attitudes, but they depended on farmers’ environmental concerns and beliefs. The study demonstrated that research priorities should address agronomic problems caused by the adoption of conservation practices in organic farming, weed control in particular.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:Farmers, Conservation agriculture, Organic farming, motivations, Challenges, Attitudes, TILMAN-ORG, reduced tillage
Agrovoc keywords:
Language
Value
URI
English
farmers
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_2805
Subjects:"Organics" in general
Crop husbandry > Soil tillage
Environmental aspects
Research affiliation: Estonia > Estonian University of Life Sciences
Spain > University of Barcelona
European Union > CORE Organic > CORE Organic II > TILMAN-ORG
Austria > FiBL Austria
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Knowledge exchange > Advice
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Soil
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Sustainability > Climate
France > ISARA - Institut supérieure d’agriculture Lyon
Belgium > Flanders > Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research (ILVO) - (Merelbeke) > Unit Plant Sciences
Italy > Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa
Italy > Univ. Pisa, Agricultural Sciences
Germany > University of Kassel > Department of Organic Farming and Cropping
UK > Univ. Newcastle
ISSN:1879-4238
DOI:DOI 10.1007/s13165-015-0136-0
Deposited By: Mäder, Paul
ID Code:29478
Deposited On:23 Nov 2015 11:13
Last Modified:07 Jul 2023 09:43
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

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