Relative Importance of Barriers and Levers to Intercropping Systems Adoption: A Comparison of Farms and Co-Operatives

Abstract

This paper focuses on the barriers and levers to the adoption of Wheat–Pea intercropping systems. More precisely, we define a hierarchy of the main barriers and levers to adoption using the Relative Importance Index (RII) method. This method allows comparison of incentives, negative (brakes) and positive (levers), for adoption at two levels of the value chain, i.e., the farmer and the co-operative level. For this comparison, we conducted two surveys: one on 71 Belgian farmers and the other on 19 French co-operatives. Our results show that the barriers of high importance for the farmers are both internal and external, while the co-operatives consider only internal barriers. That is, the farmers mainly focus on external (market access and public subsidies) and internal (lack of technical advice and extension, as well as collection and storage problems) obstacles to evaluate the intercropping system. For the co-operatives, the most important barriers are related to the sorting and storage of the mixture (internal barriers). Regarding levers, farmers and co-operatives converge on the importance of almost the same external levers, e.g., building new value chains through contracts and labeling, specific extension services for farmers and logistical support for co-operatives.