Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
toxicity of the pesticides used in my intensive agriculture made me feel quite poorly …',
demonstrating his deep concerns with health problems associated with the pesticides used
in conventional farming (OF10). Of those twelve farmers who gave environmental reasons
for changing to organic, three are unqualified, one has a certificate, two have a diploma, four
a degree, one a higher degree and one a
Doctorate; this suggests a link between higher
education and environmental awareness. In contrast, Table 1b provides a list of reasons
provided by conventional farmers (currently the largest contributor to food security in the
UK) for their non-adoption of organic farming, shown in descending rank order. Four key
findings emerge from Table 1b: first, 28% of conventional respondents said organic farming
wouldn't suit their type of land; second, 24% gave financial reasons for their non-adoption;
third, 20% gave technocentric reasons; and fourth, only one conventional farmer said he
would consider changing to organic. It is likely that, within this study group, most
conventional farmers who had the propensity to change to organic have already done so.
Analysis proceeded by asking respondents what they know about the amount of fossil fuels
used by some organic farmers in the mechanical weeding processes. The key finding is that
almost all the organic respondents said organic arable farmers use a lot of fossil fuels. This
practice contributes to climate warming and is therefore liable to have a detrimental effect
on food security through reduced crop yield and/or failure. However, several organic
respondents declined to comment possibly because they were aware that more fossil fuels
are used in mechanical weeding processes than chemical methods of weeding. Most
conventional farmers in the survey were not critical of organic farmers in relation to this
issue.
The diversity of farmers' attitudes and cognition in relation to whether organic agriculture is
an environmentally sustainable method of food production is demonstrated in Figure 2.
1. Sustainable. 2. Could be sustainable. 3. Not sustainable. 4. Don't know.
Fig. 2. Frequency of farmers' opinions on sustainability of organic farming
Unsurprisingly, more organic (72%) than conventional farmers (44%) felt that organic
agriculture is a sustainable form of food production. Another 20 per cent of organic
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