Abstract
Urbanization and low productivity are real threats to the sustainability of organic farming. The adoption of farm machinery plays a vital role in overcoming these threats to ensure a sustainable and more profitable organic farming model. Farm machinery can also increase farmland yield and reduce the need for labor, although the requirement of significant capital investment often prevents small farmers from buying machinery. There is an increased need to comprehend all relevant elements associated with farming machinery procurement and service delivery. In this article, we provide insight into the impact of different variables of farmers on the adoption of agricultural equipment. A total of 301 organic farmers were surveyed in three districts of Punjab, Pakistan. It was found that the most common machinery concerned herein are tube-well/pumps, tractors, tillage machinery, and thrashers/harvesters. Results from a multinomial probit estimation showed that farm machinery ownership is positively correlated with capital assets, civil infrastructure, alternative sources of power, and credit facility. The findings indicated that policymakers and stakeholders should not concentrate merely on short term planning, such as improving agricultural machinery’s adoption rate. Still, they should also strive to upgrade physical infrastructure and facilities and provide credit services to create an enabling environment that can empower the citizen in adopting large scale use of agricultural machinery for long term sustainability of organic farming.
Highlights
According to current projections, the global population is expected to reach 9.6 billion people in 2050 [1]
We evaluated the impact of ownership types on the ownership of agricultural machinery
We evaluated four models to estimate the effect of these factors on the adoption of agricultural machinery by farmers and to control possible endogenous problems within the data set
Summary
The global population is expected to reach 9.6 billion people in 2050 [1]. The consumption of staple foods such as wheat, rice, maize, meat, and fish is predicted to proliferate, especially in the third world countries and developing nations [2] These are the same areas where many people live below the poverty line of USD 1.90 per day; this group of an impoverished population is predicted to increase to 274.5 million persons [3]. The rapid increase in population and the concurrent decrease in per capita farmland creates serious concern regarding whether organic agriculture can produce a higher yield and sustain the increasing demand. This problem is incredibly real for the South Asia region, which has a high population density. The agriculture sector suffers from a seasonal labor force in rural areas [5,6]
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