Have City Dwellers Lost Touch with Modern Agriculture? In Quest of Differences between Urban and Rural Population

Abstract

Frequently, urbanization and loss of an urban population’s connection to agriculture are given as the main reasons for decreasing societal acceptance of modern-day agriculture. An online survey of the German population in 2018 provided two selective subsamples of rural (n = 337) and urban residents (n = 560). Comparing group differences with regard to (a) the general societal perspective on agriculture and (b) positions on the use of digital farming technologies shows only little evidence of significant contributions of the used predictor items. Thus, no generalized tendency can be found that city dwellers are more opposed to agricultural developments based on different attitudes and perceptions.