Preferences for crop production practices among conventional and alternative farmers

Abstract

One of the major gaps in the empirical literature comparing conventional and organic farmers is the degree to which conventional farmers would prefer or can be motivated to use reduced-input practices comparable to those of alternative agriculturalists. This paper presents the results of a 1987 survey of a random sample of New York farm operators and a two-thirds sample of the membership list of the New York State chapter of the Natural Organic Farmers Association (NOFA-NY). The results show that while conventional farmers tend to have a lower preference for reduced-input practices than do alternative agriculturalists (NOFA-NY members), conventional farmers tend to prefer pest- and disease-resistant crop varieties, nonpurchased, on-farmproduced sources of fertility, and nonchemical means of disease control over high-input, chemically-based production practices. The largest differences between conventional and alternative agriculturalists are with respect to preferences for weed control practices. For six of the eight practices assessed, operators of small farms (annual gross sales less than $40,000) were intermediate in their preferences between commercial-scale farmers (gross sales $40,000 or more) and alternative agriculturalists. There was, however, virtually no difference between conventional and organic farmers in their tillage practice preferences; similar percentages of the NOFA members and commercial-scale farmers preferred minimum tillage practices, while the percentage of small farmers preferring to use as few tillage operations as possible was lower than that of both commercialscale and organic farmers. Differences between conventional and organic farmers in their production practice preferences are far smaller than differences in their environmental orientations.