Farmers facing changed urban dietary patterns: whether and what to adapt?

Abstract

To cope with the impacts of shifts in food consumption patterns required to reduce environmental problems, farmers will have to adapt at farm level. We explore farmers’ intentions and preferred options to adapt in the metropolitan region of Vienna, Austria, in response to changed food demand among the Viennese population. In doing so, we consider changed food consumption patterns for (1) regional food, (2) organic food, and (3) meat in several scenarios. By applying the contingent behavior method to farmers in a survey, we assess farm adaptations with respect to production orientation (crop and livestock production patterns) and production mode (conventional or organic). The results show that, depending on the farm type, farmers tend to make specific contextual adaptations in production orientation. Accordingly, less specialized farmers are more likely to employ transformative adaptations. Most farmers who adapt production orientation, however, tend to employ incremental adaptations, i.e., extensions of what is already done. A logit model indicates that, among changed food consumption patterns, increasing regional food consumption is the most influential factor in farmers’ decision to adapt production orientation. Different adaptation paths were generated demonstrating the need for coordinated policy measures that consider the diversity of the different farm types to further encourage farm adaptations and reduce environmental risks associated with modern farming.