Abstract
The conventional production model based on extensive use of chemical inputs such as pesticides is increasingly challenged. Organic agriculture is considered as one of the most important alternative agricultural systems to produce healthy food without any chemicals. Current models are not suitable for prediction of environmental behaviors. The current study aims to analyze the diffusion of organic agriculture to produce healthy food with the environmental sociology approach among farmers. The study was conducted using the survey research and multi-stage random sampling in Fars province, in the south of Iran. The samples included 215 farmers. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by conducting a pilot study out of the main sample. The results showed that the farmers have strong attitude to the environment and are for the most part, highly intentioned to perform organic activities. Based on the results, the farmers’ intention toward adoption of organic agriculture, environmental identity, and responsibility of pro-environmental behavior, and their moral norms play an important role to accept organic agricultural activities. There are also some effective factors in implementation of organic agriculture including farmers` increasing awareness about the principles of organic farming, controllability of environmental behaviors as well as their accessibility to the resources and facilities for organic farming. The study emphasized that the attitude and enhancing the knowledge do not lead to pro-environmental behaviors and organic activities directly. Using the models and environmental sociology theories is more efficient to explain pro-environmental behaviors. To this aim, some suggestions were presented to increase the adoption of organic activities and persuade the Iranian farmers to select this kind of cultivation.
Highlights
Since the green revolution in the 1950s, the traditional agriculture system has moved toward the green agriculture or the conventional agriculture system
The current production model based on using high chemical inputs such as pesticides aiming to increase agricultural productions is challenging since a large number of studies demonstrated destructive impacts on the environment and negative impacts on producers and consumers’ health (Gracia and de Magistris 2013)
Some problems include the contamination of water sources, affecting the soil’s health, and decreasing absorbable amount of some micronutrients such as zinc, iron and copper leading to the loss of biological balance of ecosystems, pests’ resistance to pesticides and a rise in new pests, as well as reducing the quality of agricultural products (Malek-Saeidi et al 2012)
Summary
Since the green revolution in the 1950s, the traditional agriculture system has moved toward the green agriculture or the conventional agriculture system. In this model it is assumed that the independent variables are the main and direct factors in adoption of the organic agricultural activities These variables include knowledge of organic agriculture principles, responsibility of pro-environmental behavior, environmental identity, attitude to negative consequences of the conventional agriculture, social norm, moral norm, attitude to the environment, perceived control of pro-environmental behavior and intention to adopt organic agricultural activities. A large number of Iranian agricultural specialists criticize the lack of respect for proenvironmental activities They focused on creating a new agricultural approach for achieving sustainable development in order to stop unnecessary consumption of chemicals, which harm the environment, farming areas and human health considerably, as well as using more organic productions since providing the healthy food and minimizing the environmental contamination arising from the use of agricultural pesticides are the general policies and strategies in Iran (Rezaei-Moghaddam and Fatemi 2013; Rezaei-Moghaddam et al 2005).
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