Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The study established that older female farmers with large household sizes were more likely
to be certified-organic. Similarly, farmers who reside in the sub-wards Ogagwini, Ezigani, and
Hwayi were more likely to be certified organic. This suggests the presence of local synergies
in adoption which raises the question about the extent to which ignoring these influences biases
policy conclusions. The negative correlation between land size and adoption implies that
smaller farms appear to have greater propensity for adoption of certified organic farming. This
finding is supported by several studies reviewed in the literature that allude to the fact that
organic farms tend to be smaller than conventional farms. The significance of livestock is
explained by the importance of manure for organic farming. The study also found that older
farmers tend to be adopters supporting findings by [37]. The propensity to adopt was also
positively influenced by asset index which is a proxy for wealth.
4.2. Risk aversion and risk management strategies
The distribution of risk aversion preferences for each prospect for the fully-certified organic,
partially-certified organic and non-organic crop farmers are presented in Table 3. The distri‐
bution of responses was spread across all classes of risk aversion for the pooled data. It can be
noted that on average, the majority of the respondents revealed their preference for prospects
representing intermediate and moderate risk aversion alternatives across the three farmer
groups. Table 3 further shows that non-organic farmers were the most risk averse being
classified as extremely risk averse at 20. 4%, compared to fully and partially-certified organic
farmers at 7. 3% and 4. 2%, respectively. This explains their non-adoption of certified organic
farming, despite its introduction in the area since the year 2000. On the other hand, the fully-
certified organic farmers were the least risk averse, being classified as neutral to risk preferring
at 9. 1% compared to 7. 3% and 4. 1% for the partially certified and non-organic farmers
respectively. These results conform to
a priori
expectations regarding the risk preference
patterns of smallholder farmers.
Risk aversion classification
Farmer group
Slight to
neutral
Neutral to
preferring
Extreme
Severe Intermediate
Moderate
Fully certified organic (n = 48)
7.30
5.50
30.90
40.00
7.30
9.10
Partially certified organic(n = 95)
4.20
8.30
44.80
29.20
5.20
7.30
Non-organic (n= 46)
20.40
8.20
30.60
30.60
0.00
4.10
Pooled data (n = 189)
9.00
7.50
37.50
32.50
4.50
7.00
Source: Field data
Table 3.
Distribution of smallholder farmers according to risk preference patterns in KwaZulu-Natal
According to Figure 4, the non-organic farmers constituted 55. 6% of respondents within the
extreme risk aversion class compared to 22. 2% for fully-certified organic and 22. 2% for
