Abstract
As acceptance of the concept of agricultural sustainability has grown, it has become increasingly recognized that notions of sustainability and how to promote it will necessarily vary depending on the commodity in question. It thus becomes important to investigate how movements towards sustainability are emerging for different commodities. The objective of our paper is to present the results of an analysis of Washington wheat producers that investigates the degree to which interest in sustainability exists amongst those farmers and whether structural factors and farmer personal characteristics are more or less significant than social network factors in explaining farmers’ views of possible sustainable methods. Our findings indicate that a measure indicating use of local social networks to gain information is associated with a higher degree of interest in new production methods aimed at improving agricultural sustainability.
Highlights
Discussions about how to promote ecologically sustainable agricultural production systems have moved from the fringe to the mainstream in the United States and around the world
“modern” farmer envisioned in much of the traditional innovation of diffusions research, or are these young, highly educated farmers becoming more interested in “progressive” alternatives, like those farmers envisioned in the work of Warner and others? Second, are these indicators of human capital and size more or less important than indicators of social networks and farmer attitudes about the role of farming in the social structure in predicting which farmers are most likely to be interested in practices associated with a more sustainable agriculture?
In collaboration with Washington State University’s Social and Economic Sciences Research Center (SESRC), a sixteen page survey, which was pre-tested on several wheat farmers who were known to team members, was mailed to the corrected sample of 1,067 growers
Summary
Discussions about how to promote ecologically sustainable agricultural production systems have moved from the fringe to the mainstream in the United States and around the world. We seek to contribute to the development of a more nuanced conceptualization of agricultural sustainability by examining some of the specific challenges facing wheat farmers in Washington State. Wheat production in Eastern Washington is characterized, as is the case with many other grain crops, by the persistence of family ownership of most of the means of production This means that analyzing the influences on farmer decision-making is important for understanding how sustainable practices may or may not be advanced in this sector. The objective of this paper is to further improve our understanding of the role of farmers in promoting a more sustainable direction for agriculture by investigating the extent to which Washington State wheat farmers are interested in a more ecologically sustainable alternative vision of agriculture, and to isolate the factors that are significant in identifying those farmers who would be most likely to pursue such alternative strategies in that particular agricultural sector. Views of the desirability of a possible alternative vision to the conventional model of agricultural production
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