‘Organic farming’ in Denmark: Enhancement or dissolution? A survey among organic farmers

Summary

The Danish organic farmers’ strategy of strategic cooperation with actors of the conventional food production chains is widely seen as a success story, not least in terms of volume and efficiency. On the other hand it has been claimed that this strategy would easily lead to a dissolution of the network forces that produce and reproduce the ideas and values of organic farming and thereby the forces that are developing the organic farming practice. The objective of this paper is to re-examine the surveys among the Danish organic farmers, conducted by Michelsen and his colleagues to examine whether the process we are witnessing is a process of enhancement or dissolution of ‘Organic farming’. Michelsen finds a minor difference in attitudes toward organic and conventional farming between earlier and newly converted organic farmers, and he also finds that the motive for conversion still is environmental concern. When discriminating between full-time and part-time farmers the analysis in this paper shows a clear difference in attitudes towards conventional farming and arguments for conversion to organic farming. While full-time farmers converted before 1993, like their part-time colleagues, held strong negative attitudes toward conventional farming and rationalised their choice of conversion by environmental concerns, full-time farmers converted in 1997 did not hold critical attitudes towards conventional farming and mainly rationalised their choice of conversion from an economic position, while disagreement with conventional farming and the idea of better products were given no priority at all. The conclusion of the paper is that the re-examination supports prior findings: that newly converted organic farmers are no longer necessarily enrolled into the organic network.