Abstract
Proponents of hay milk farming claim several benefits on an ecological and economic level, while little about the social aspects has been studied so far. The present study serves as a first exploration of certain aspects of social sustainability from the perspective of hay milk farmers. The results of an online survey of 284 Austrian hay milk farmers are presented. The statistical analyses included Fisher’s exact tests (contingency tables), Kendall’s rank correlations and a two-step cluster analysis. The sampled farms show positive attitudes toward the work in agriculture (e.g., contribution to the cultural landscape) and are mainly satisfied regarding several job aspects (e.g., occupational diversity), but to a great extent dissatisfied with others (e.g., social recognition, time resources). The critical stressors are the agricultural policy, the economic situation, too little time for partnership or family life as well as bureaucracy and work overload. Multiple medium associations between aspects of well-being are revealed. Obvious and meaningful relationships between farm characteristics and aspects of well-being are scarce. The cluster analysis does little to help explain the characteristics of well-being within the patterns of farms. It therefore seems that the perception of the investigated aspects of well-being on hay milk farms is mostly formed individually and is only associated with the farms’ characteristics to a certain degree.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Hay milk farming is a particular means of dairy production
In this paper we aim to explore elements of social sustainability that might be specific to hay milk farmers in Austria
Examining data from an online survey of 284 hay milk farms, this study aims to answer the following research questions: How do Austrian hay milk farmers perceive selected issues regarding their living and working conditions and how does this perception contrast with results from other studies in similar fields? What kind of relationships can be determined between farm characteristics and aspects of well-being? Which relationships exist between different aspects of well-being? We hypothesize that selected aspects of social sustainability in Austrian hay milk production differ from mainstream dairy production
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Hay milk farming is a particular means of dairy production. As a certified production system, it is widespread in grassland-dominated regions of Austria (about 15% of the milk delivered in Austria [1]) but is developing in other European countries [2]. The. European Union labeled hay milk as a Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) [2]. In contrast to conventional dairy farming, hay milk dairy cows, sheep or goats get fresh grass, hay and a complementary concentrate feed of up to 25% of the total dietary dry matter—
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