Abstract
The diversification of cropping systems has the potential to contribute towards a sustainable land use while preserving biodiversity. Mixed cropping is one possibility to increase biodiversity within farming systems. However, adoption of mixed cropping systems is challenging for farmers, as the agricultural sector has evolved around pure stands over the past decades and path dependencies have emerged. Yet, little is known about farmers’ motivation to adopt mixed cropping. Utilizing the theory of planned behavior as the main framework, this paper studies the psychological factors underlying farmers’ intention to adopt mixed cropping based on an online survey with 172 German farmers. In addition, the most crucial adoption obstacles are assessed. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, we show for the first time that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and injunctive as well as descriptive group norms explain over 52% of farmers’ intention to adopt mixed cropping. Our results also demonstrate that perceived ecological benefits positively influence a farmer’s attitude towards mixed cropping. Missing sales opportunities for mixed yields, the uneven maturing of crops, and deficient economic benefits are ranked as the most crucial obstacles for the implementation of mixed cropping. These results, which can be relevant for other European countries as well, indicate that the introduction of a voluntary agri-environmental scheme could encourage adoption and that considering positive effects of group norms within policy schemes could further increase adoption on a large scale.
Highlights
The sustainable intensification of agriculture and conservation of biodiversity are major challenges that the agricultural sector is currently facing
Mixed cropping can contribute towards the sustainable intensification of agriculture by diversifying cropping systems and preserving biodiversity
The advantages associated with mixed cropping are often accompanied by associated challenges from a farmer’s point of view, and research related to factors influencing the adoption decision is scarce
Summary
The sustainable intensification of agriculture and conservation of biodiversity are major challenges that the agricultural sector is currently facing. The diversification of cropping systems has the potential to contribute to sustainable intensification while preserving biodiversity (Meynard et al 2018; RosaSchleich et al 2019). One possibility to diversify cropping systems, which has not received much attention by European farmers in the recent past, is the application of mixed cropping systems (e.g., Martin-Guay et al 2018). Since the agricultural sector has evolved around pure stands over the past few decades and path dependencies have emerged, changing the production systems towards mixed stands is challenging for farmers (e.g., Bedoussac et al 2015; Lemken et al 2017). Learning and opportunity costs arise if farmers change towards mixed cropping, decreasing the potential benefits and reducing the willingness to adopt mixed cropping. In Europe and Germany in particular, crop rotations are largely dominated by cereal crops while grain legumes only play a minor role
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