Organic farmers' attitudes

Willie Lockeretz (WLockeretz@infonet.tufts.edu)
Fri, 8 Mar 96 17:08:56 EST

Dan Rigby recently inquired about any "surveys of organic or indeed
sustainable farmers that have focused on attitudes and views relating to the
issues involved, rather than those which have looked at comparative
profitability/yields."

Three that I have done that may be what you are looking for are:

Motivations and practices of organic farmers. (Co-author S. Wernick).
Compost Science/Land Utilization 18:20-24 (1977).

Organic farming in Massachusetts: An alternative approach to agriculture
in an urbanized state. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 50:663-667
(1995).

Diversity of personal and enterprise characteristics among organic farmers
in the northeastern United States. Biological Agriculture and Horticulture
(in press).

All these papers were largely about the human side of organic farming, i.e.,
who the organic farmers were, and why they did what they did, and what they
thought about it; the performance of their operations was secondary. I hope
you find this helpful.

William Lockeretz
Tufts University