Abstract
Currently, farmers who are not certified according to organic certification schemes are considered to be conventional farmers. Discussions in the farming sector reveal a view that the current organic classification system is too narrow and does not account for the full heterogeneity of the ecological practices that are prevalent in the agricultural sector. The failure to recognise practices within conventional farming, such as low-input farming or conservation agriculture, may therefore undermine efforts to adopt ecological practices. This study investigates heterogeneity in farmer uptake of management practices using factor analysis for dimension reduction and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) for identification of farmer segments. The findings reveal four farmer profiles with a varying degree of use of chemicals and ecological, alternative, or mixed management approaches. Using seemingly unrelated regression, we find that being certified according to the Swedish organic certification scheme KRAV, or the EU organic label, does not have an impact on a farmer's profile, suggesting that the data do not support the organic/conventional dichotomy. Instead, age, farming income and geographical location are to a greater degree the key factors in determining the larger farmer profile compared with the smaller, more diversified farmer profiles.
Highlights
Organic farming practices have played an important role in Euro pean farming over the past decade
We contribute to the literature by developing an approach for constructing a typology of the current uptake of ecological practices using a variety of farms in Sweden as empirical examples
We developed an approach for constructing a ty pology of the current uptake of ecological practices on a variety of farms in Sweden
Summary
Organic farming practices have played an important role in Euro pean farming over the past decade. As consumption of certified organic products has increased (Eurostat, 2020), part of the agricultural sector has converted in response to the growing demand for this type of pro duce. Between 2007 and 2017, the farm area devoted to certified organic production increased by 70%, and 20% of the total farm area is under conversion (numbers from 2019), reflecting the potential growth in the coming years (European Union, 2019). Developments within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the past two decades underline the interconnectedness between agricultural and environmental systems (Leduc et al, 2021) and further emphasise the demand for ecological practices. EI decreases the negative environmental impacts, e.g. trough reduction in use of chemicals (e.g. Garibaldi et al (2019); Gurr et al (2016); Wan et al (2018); Wan et al (2019); Wan et al (2020b)), while improving the productivity and the crop yields (e.g. Bright et al (2017); Cardinale et al (2010), Wan et al (2018); Wan et al (2020b); Gurr et al (2016))
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