Personal, Farm and Value Orientations in Conversion to Organic Farming

Despite the 20% annual increase in consumption of organic foods, the price premiums for organic produce, and the critical mass of organic production and producers in North Dakota, the level of adoption of organic farming remains quite low. The goal of this research is to assist organic farming agencies and organizations in developing programming targeted to potential adopters of organic farming. It accomplishes this by identifying variables which classify producers as either organic or conventional. While environmental-ethical motivating factors explained the classification of producers into organic and conventional farming categories, none of the farm structural variables and only one personal demographic variable were able to classify producers. In examining the logistic regression analysis, the three most important classificatory factors were environmental-ethical reasons, production orientation, and farming orientation. The implications of the results for programming to target potential adopters of organic farming are discussed.