Factors Driving Grain Producers to Convert to Organic Farming Systems

Factors Motivating Farmers to Adopt Organic Grain Farming

Economic drivers (14 farmers)

For most American farmers, farming is an enterprise. Farmers consider economic factors when they make farming decisions, and organic agriculture is no exception. The interview revealed two perspectives of economic drivers.

• Profitability (8 farmers). By having the price premium, organic grain farming can bring better profitability to farmers than the conventional counterpart. The price premium has attracted 7 farmers to adopt organic grain farming in the interview. For instance, farmer #12 said: “I think I heard about those $21 beans per bushel, at that time you could get $21 a Bushel! And I thought, man maybe I should do that.”
• Small farm viability (9 farmers). Organic farmers averagely operate a smaller farm than conventional farmers. For being as small farms, coupling with the sluggish conventional grain markets in the past several years, the farmers are in a disadvantageous position to compete with bigger farmers. Farmer #17 said: “I transitioned because we have a small farm and the goal was to make more money per acre so we could stay on our small farm. Rent is very competitive in this area…Well, I got tired of all the games that the chemical companies played. They were giving special prices to big farmers. They had some people that got way better, cheaper prices than we did, we were small.”

Health concern (15 farmers)

In the interview, we found fifteen farmers put health concern as their motivation to adopt organic farming. Specifically, two perspectives of health concern were discovered by the interview.

• Personal health concern (13 farmers). Thirteen farmers, in the interview, indicated they are concerned about health problems of themselves or their families caused by chemicals when they had conventional farming operations. Farmer #10 explained how his health concern motivated him to adopt organic farming: “There are several reasons why I started organic farming, and the first one is my father got Parkinson's disease, and he later died of Parkinson's disease. And… there is a direct link between those agricultural insecticides and pesticides and development of Parkinson's disease…. So that was a motivating factor.”
• Public’s health concern (4 farmers). After farmers conceived concerns about personal health, some farmers made further reflection and developed a general health concern for the public. Farmer #07 said: “And of course the more you think about it, the more [you concern]. If there's a little bit of residue from a lot of products, it seems like that could have compounding affects negatively on people's health and just seems like we have such a growing problem as far as cancer. You have to wonder what the sources for these things are? How much has it been because of the way food is produced? And, yeah, the side effects and unintended consequences [were there].”

Improvement of natural resources (12 farmers)

Twelve interviewed organic farmers believe their operation should focus on soil health. Organic farmers do not see necessary conflicts between pursuing profitability and preserving natural resources. On the contrary, they believe their farm’s prosperity relies on the improvements of the soil. Farmer #02 identified himself as “a firm believer of soil health,” and he said: “You gotta take care of your soil health and it can be done.” Farmer #14 also said: “I think, maximizing our profit while preserving our natural resources, our soil and so. So those two go hand in hand… Your soil life, your biology in the soil can affect your fertility.” In addition, some organic farmers indicated they have hilly ground, and they found their land had become seriously eroded from the past conventional operations. They chose the organic operation to control erosion and improve the soil. Farmer #05 said, “I thought the soil had been eroding from that top ground to the bottom ground way too much. There was an incentive there to put in oats the first year and we're going to stop some of that erosion…So, not only am I thinking about, oh, raising organic grain and getting a good price for it, but I'm also thinking about what it's doing for the soil.”

Values on biodiversity (7 farmers)

Seven farmers indicated they choose organic farming because it is compatible with their values on biodiversity. Organic farmers believe more biodiversity will bring better ecosystem services and can solve many agronomic problems. Farmer #16 said: “So we see our health and our economy supported by biological diversity and that's very compatible with our quality of life….We believe that biological diversity really is the answer to our problems and that diversity will give us the process.” Farmer #01 further explained: “There's a great number of natural predatorial insects that will eat aphids. That will eat some of the nematodes in the soil. There are natural ways to combat the problems that all farmers have.”

Conservation tradition (6 farmers)

Many of the farmers had adopted conservational practices before they started organic farming.

Six farmers deemed land stewardship as their family farm’s tradition. They choose organic farming to honor their conservation tradition and achieve land stewardship goals. Farmer #06 said: “I feel I have a responsibility to try to leave the land better than I received.” And #06’s father added: “I’m the second-generation farmer here. My dad before me, we have always been very conservation-minded.”

The nostalgia of the old-way farming (6 farmers)

With the industrialized agriculture operation, conventional agricultural production may make farmers feel like being apart from the land. Six organic farmers indicated they cherished the memory of the “old way of farming,” and they want to bring back the feeling of land attachment. Farmer #09 recalled the farm they used to have in his childhood, and he said: “Without question, it's in my blood to do things that are more closely connected to the land. When I grew up, I was raising pigs outdoors. It was row cultivating the corn instead of using chemicals….And I became an adult and I started to have a family, I realized that the way we farm (conventionally) today pretty much leaves out all the fun stuff, you know, it's like all the things that I look back on and really cherish and see that they were valuable in my development.”

Self-challenges (4 farmers)

Four farmers viewed organic farmers as a self-challenge opportunity. For instance, farmer #12 made the organic adoption decision in the year 2000. When he described his decision, he said: “When the millennium came, people have this feeling it's the millennium. I want to do something (different), and that was what I did. So it's like if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it. So I did it in 2000. I transitioned all of this farm to organic.”

God’s will (4 farmers)

Four organic farmers actively identified themselves as Christian, and they believed they are responsible for taking care of the land God created. Christian farmers saw organic farming is a way to follow God’s will and put more trust in their faith. Farmer #11 said: “I'm a Catholic, and so that's important. So, this is God's creation and we're to be stewards and take the best care of it. And so that's an important factor in organic farming.”

Compatible with the existing system (4 farmers)

Four organic farmers indicated they had diversified farming operation with extended crop rotations even before they officially started organic farming. They saw many of their practices already compatible with the requirement of organic farming. So, the compatibility with their existing farming system motivated them to adopt organic farming. Farmer # 06 had dairy operation besides grain operation, and he said: “We already had the crop rotations with the cows anyway… It was compatible with the dairy.”

Family's support (4 farmers)

In the interview, four organic farmers emphasized their decision to adopt organic farming was a family-decision. They received significant encouragement from family members that support the farmers to convert their farms to organic farming. Farmer #05 described how his son inspired him to adopt organic farming: “Well, my son, he had the idea of planting apple trees and then they'd be organic and we would make the apples into a hard apple cider. And so I guess that was kind of the impetus to go down the road of organic. Farmer #02 shared about how his wife insisted on organic farming: “And my wife said that if you want a farm that you have to do it organically. She was into the organic. When she read things about putting fish genes in strawberries, she was pretty adamant about it.”

Quantitative analysis of survey

Based on the results of the interview, we initially developed 21items to identify motivating factors of farmers to adopt organic grain farming. We first conducted an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify the motivating factors underlying the 21 items. We removed items with factor loading less than 0.60 and retained 14 items with a 7-factor solution. Table 1 presents the results of EFA and the descriptive statistics of the items loaded in each factor. In addition, to examine if there are any differences between pioneer organic farmers (who started organic farming before the year 2000) and contemporary organic farmers (who started organic farming on the year 2000 or later) in terms of the organic adoption motivations, we conducted independent T-tests for each factor.

According to Table 1, the premier factors motivated farmers to adopt organic grain farming are Personal Health Concern, Economic Drivers, and Natural Resources Improvement. The secondary motivating factors include Public Health Concern, Compatibility and Honors and Beliefs. The least influential motivating factor is Self-Challenge Personality. The results of independent T-tests show that Honors and Beliefs is the only motivating factor significantly different between pioneer organic farmers and contemporary organic farmers. All other motivating factors are not significantly different between the two groups of organic farmers. This finding indicates ideological honors and beliefs, as a motivating factor, more strongly motivate pioneer organic farmers than contemporary organic farmers. Other motivating factors including the economic driver, natural resources improvement, concerns for personal and public health, compatibility, and self-challenge personality equally motivate both pioneer and contemporary organic farmers.

Challenges

By interviewing the organic farmers about the barriers and challenges they experienced in the process of adopting organic grain farming, we identified multiple challenges for organic grain farming adoption in Iowa. In summary, we discovered five major areas of challenges that impeded farmers' adoption of organic grain farming. Table 2 presents the specific types of challenges in each area. Based on the challenges we identified in the interview, we developed 28 items in the survey to measure its challenging levels. Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of each surveyed challenge items.

Combining the results and findings from both interviews and surveys, we found specific challenges of organic farming adoption have evolved over time as changes took place on institutional, technical, and climatic factors. 1) Operational challenges are the most prevalent challenges. The operational challenges are centered on weed control. Good control of weed needs to cooperative weather, which makes organic farming are highly sensitive to climatic factors. 2) Marketing became easier but not for all situations. Farmers indicate nowadays, the marketing of certified organic row crops (soybeans and corn) is not difficult. But the challenges are marketing of transitional grains, small grains and hay crops. 3) Agricultural policies have become more favorable to organic farming than before, but simpler and more straightforward regulation procedures are preferred by farmers. 4) Financial risks during the transitional period are still existed as a minor to somewhat challenging. The risks are mainly caused by low profitability during the transitional period. Nowadays, most bankers have a better understanding of organic farming’s market opportunities, and they are no longer resistant to finance organic farmers’ production. 4) As more supports from USDA, local land grant universities and non-profit farmers’ organizations (such as Iowa Organic Association and Practical Farmers of Iowa) have invested significant efforts in both research and education related to organic farming in the past two decades. The information challenges have been relieved. But farmers still see local extension agents lack expertise in organic farming is minor to somewhat challenging. As more organic agriculture enterprises including organic seeds, fertilizers, and small machinery companies started to operate in Iowa, the organic input challenges have also been alleviated. 5)   The survey shows social pressure is a minor challenge to organic farmers. In the interview, many farmers indicated the social pressures from their neighbor conventional farmers still exist. But organic farmers across Iowa tended to form a professional community by joining organic farmers’ organizations, attending organic farmers’ meetings, attending and joining organic field days. Farmers get both mentally and technically support from the organic community, and they become less brother by the negative social pressures from the conventional farmers. 6) Land tenure is not a major challenge because organic farmers prefer to remain a smaller operation size rather than expanding the land. Sustaining on the small farm actually acts as a motivation to adopt organic farming.   

Strategies

Through asking questions like “How did you overcome those challenges?” in the interview, we discovered farmers have mainly employed operational strategies, marketing strategies, learning strategies, and financial strategies to overcome the adoption challenges. Based on the interview responses, we developed a list of 34 strategies that can be used to overcome the barriers and challenges of organic farming. Because of the extended length of the list, we only present the strategies that have been employed by more than 30% of farmers. Table 4 presents the specific strategies, percent of being taken, and descriptive statistics of the level of importance.

According to Table 4, the strategies’ raking of importance level seems to be consistent with the percentage of being taken. We examined the relationship with Person Correlation. A strong positive correlation (r=0.93, p<.001) was found. We can conclude that farmers employ a certain adoption strategy because they think the strategy is important. 1) Top operational strategies are crop rotations, cover crops, and starting organic operation from a small scale. 2) Marketing strategies include diverse marketing methods (Forward contracting, spotting marketing, and direct marketing) and multiple marketing information sources (from other farmers, conferences, and USDA reports). 3) Because organic farming is knowledge and information-based innovation. Farmers employed learning strategies to fill the information and knowledge gap. Farmers employed both interpersonal learning and self-learning. Asking questions to other farmers, attending field days and conferences are important interpersonal learning strategies. Reading farming magazines and searching for information online are important self-learning strategies. Financing strategies and land tenure strategies are not as popular as the other three groups of strategies we just discussed. This is  maybe 1) because land tenure was rated as a minor challenge for organic grain farming; 2) financial risks inherently exist in all farming enterprises, and there is no effective tool to lower the financial risks in the transitional period so far unless substantial policy changes happen. The certification cost-share program seems to attract a good proportion of farmers to enroll, but the actual financial help it provides is a small amount. Government programs for financial assistance have a relatively lower proportion of users, maybe due to its’ complexity, lacking flexibility, and local office agents are not knowledgeable enough about the programs. In summary, we suggest extension educators and organic specialists continue to promote operational strategies, marketing strategies, and learning strategies among new organic farmers. We also suggest policymakers optimize and develop more effective programs farmers can enroll to help with their financial challenges.

Benefits

We are interested in knowing what specific benefits farmers have experienced from your organic grain farming operation. Figure 3 presents the benefits that farmers experienced from adopting organic grain farming. We identified specific benefits farmers experienced from adopting organic grain farming from the interviews. Then we measured the level of benefit with surveys on a five-point Likert scale (1=Not a benefit at all; 2=Low level of benefit; 3=Medium level of benefit; 4=High level of benefit; 5=Very high level of benefit).

The interview identified 15 benefits. Ten of them are non-economic benefits and only two of them are economic benefits. Though farmers experienced more types of non-economic benefits than economic benefits, economic benefits outweigh non-economic benefits in terms of the level of benefits. In general, economic benefits, human health benefits, agroecology, and value validation are consistent with the motivations of the economic drivers, personal health concern, natural resources improvement, and honor and beliefs. The feelings of enjoyment are unexpected benefits that organic farmers experienced.

Needs for educational programs and delivery formats

Table 5 presents the results of farmers’ needs for educational programs. According to the table, and the response of interviews, we found:

• Many farmers think it is important to let more young people understand and accept the value of organic farming. They think young people are more open to new ideas. They like to see there are more young organic farmers in the future.
• Organic farmers think many conventional farmers did not know enough about organic farming and they have many misunderstandings about organic farming. The organic farmers suggest having more outreach educational programs targeted on conventional farmers with two focus areas: the potential profitability of organic farming; the agroecological principles behind organic farming.
• Several farmers agree that the transition period involves multiple rough challenges. The beginning farmer program should focus on transition techniques.
• Farmers like to see more research were conducted on a real-word farm setting across the state. Some farmers moderately criticize the past organic farming research conducted at the experiment station had too may controlled conditions, and they suggested to collect more on-farm data.
• Organic farming is labor-intensity and time-demanding in the growing season. Farmers think wintertime is a better time for them to have more learning activities.

Table 6 presents the results of the effectiveness of program delivery formats. According to the table, and the response of interviews. Farmers rated field days or pasture walks, one-on-one mentors, and farmer-to-farmer workshops as more effective formats than other formats. This finding reflects organic farmers prefer bottom-up communication channels and peer-learning approach over the top-down technology transfer approaches. It is consistent with farming’s ratings on learning strategies in the strategy section. Therefore, we suggest extension educators and organic specialists play a facilitator role who helps to build a knowledge-sharing platform within programs.

A framework of organic grain farming adoption

After separately discussed the motivations, challenges, strategies, benefits, and need for educational programs regarding organic grain farming adoption. We developed the following framework (Figure 4) to demonstrate the comprehensive process of organic grain farming adoption.

Farmers’ decision to adopt organic grain farming is motivated by their health concerns, economic drivers, natural resources improvement, compatibility, honors and beliefs, and the self-challenge personality.  Farmers need to be exposed to basic information about organic farming to become interested in organic farming and conceive more and stronger motivations as they explore more information. After farmers make a decision to adopt organic grain farming, they start to take action. Then farmers will meet a series of challenges impeding their adoption actions. Farmers need to go to the information resources and educational programs related to organic grain farming to develop multiple adoption strategies to overcome the challenges. The adoption action process may be an iterative process that farmers encounter more challenges, get more information and education, develop additional strategies until all major challenges are overcome. Finally, the adoption enters into the confirmation stage that farmers started to experience different benefits of organic farming such as better profitability, healthier living environment, less erosion etc. If farmers found the benefits match their adoption motivations, their adoption decision will be enhanced, and farmers will confirm organic grain farming fit their need. We suggest presenting this framework to new organic farmers and farmers who are interested in organic farming.  By presenting this framework to farmer audiences interested in adopting organic grain farming, farmers will have a clear vision of their adoption processes. In addition, we also suggest organic specialists develop training materials based on our framework as it 1) directly discovered the concerns and needs of organic farmers; 2) identified barriers to organic conversions; 3) and provided extensive verified strategies that can be used by future farmers.