Workload on organic and conventional family farms in Switzerland

Abstract

Several studies which analyze farm work show that organic farming is associated with more labor than conventional farming. This paper compares the time budget on organic and conventional farms in Switzerland. The Swiss Agriculture Sector is an interesting case study since family farms predominate. Not only activities generating income are reported, like farm work, but also time use for unpaid work like homemaking or childrearing of all members of a family farm. We are not aware of other studies investigating the whole system of the family farm taking into account organic and conventional farming (i.e., land use management system). Our study surveyed, on average, 42 days per family farm during 1 year. Most time budget studies survey just one or only a few days. Our sample contains 9652 observation days by 229 family farms. The descriptive results show that the time budget on organic and conventional farms is distributed differently. But, it does not differ in total for farmers and not significantly for farm women. We use regression analysis to determine the unbiased influence of the land use management system organic on the workload of farm women and farmers with respect to farm type and gender on full-time business farms. We find significant differences mainly in farm work and farm-related work. The farm women on organic farms work strongly significant longer (191 min a day) in total on specialized produce farms likewise the farmer (247 min a day). Both pass a major share in farm-related labor. While the farm women pass the time also in homemaking, the farmers pass it in farm labor, according to the traditional role model in agriculture. On specialized dairy farms, the farm women work significantly 55 min a day) longer in off-farm labor. On specialized crop farms, which include not only arable farming and animal fattening but also suckler cows, the farmers show a significantly higher time budget in total on organic farms. They spend more time on farm-related work. The required expenditure of time in alternative agriculture systems is not to dismiss. A high work satisfaction may explain longer workdays. This would be an interesting question for further studies to evaluate the motivations for the allocation of the resource time through the members of a family farm.