Consumption of Organic Foods from a Life History Perspective: An Exploratory Study of British Consumers

This report provides an account of the analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews which explored the concepts, stories and theories mentioned by respondents in their discourses about organic food. It employs a biographical narrative approach in order to understand behaviour (using observation of shopping trips) and derives some conclusions regarding future development of the organic market in the UK

A Bioeconomic Rationale for the Expansion of Tree Planting by Upland Philippine Farmers

Upland farmers have long been cast as key actors of deforestation, but in the wake of timber scarcity brought on by deforestation and logging restrictions, many have adopted a new role--tree planters. Responding to market signals, upland farmers in Mindanao have spontaneously been planting fast-growing timber species on parcels going out of annual crop production. Research was conducted in Bukidnon province to compare the potential returns from trees and annual crops, and determine whether the typical farm forestry practice of intercropping trees and crops conferred efficiencies that could make it competitive with larger scale plantation projects. A bioeconomic model was developed from the research. The paper suggests that farm forestry is economically efficient, environmentally advantageous, and socially empowering, and that policy should be pursued to facilitate its expansion by providing information such as best management practices and by removing disincentives to tree planting such as harvesting restrictions and tenure insecurity. It also suggests that forestry investment should be directed at protecting and enhancing the nonmarket benefits of complex forests.bioeconomy, upland farming, tree planting, farm forestry

The Case Study Method in Organic Research

This paper argues that the systematic complexity of agriculture requires a methodological pluralism, and that case studies, used hitherto as an ad hoc and exploratory approach, might be developed as a rigorous and appropriate investigational tool in their own right, with particular relevance for the organic sector. It provides a review of the main outlines of the approach and illustrates its application in the context of marketing initiatives and their impact on rural development processes. It concludes that important insights into how and why policies work can be obtained from a comparative case study framework, which cannot be wholly obtained from other approaches

Organic farm incomes in England and Wales 1995/96 - 1997/98

This report is associated with the less detailed final report of Defra project OF0190, on the same theme, archived at https://orgprints.org/6606 This report presents results from research work carried out for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) on the financial performance of organic farms over the years 1995/96 to 1997/98. The aim of the research was to assess the financial performance of organic farms differentiated by farm type, in order to inform MAFF policy-making with respect to organic farming, and to provide a basis for assessments by farmers, advisers and other interested parties of the farm-level implications of conversion to, and continued organic farming. The specific objectives were the provision of information on different organic farm types. This was achieved through the collation of financial data collected under three different MAFF-funded research projects supplemented by data collected on other farm types, including data on dairy farms in the process of converting to organic production. Organic farm data is presented for LFA cattle and sheep farms for 1997/98 only. The samples of organic farms are small because of the limited number of organic holdings over 8 European Size Units with identifiable holding numbers in 1996 and farms with more than 50% of their land under organic management in 1997/98. Although the organic sample is small, it represents nearly 14% of organic farms with identifiable holding numbers registered with UKROFS in 1996, and this work gives an indication of the relative profitability of different organic and conventional farms of different types in the late 1990s. Detailed financial input, output, income, liabilities and assets and some physical performance measures are presented for each of the years studied. Outputs on organic dairy, horticulture and mixed farms increased each year. Outputs on organic lowland cattle and sheep farms were stable, but increasing inputs reduced Net Farm Income (NFI) each year in the study period. Outputs from organic cropping farms increased in 1996/97 and decreased in 1997/98, but results from this group are affected by the high levels of conventional cropping (25% of land area on average) and reduced conventional prices. To provide an indication of the likely performance of the organic farms if they were under conventional production, data from conventional farms are given. Conventional farms were selected by cluster analysis from the Farm Business Survey (FBS) (MAFF, 1999)1. In 1997/98 the average NFI (£/farm) of the organic farms exceeded that of the conventional farms for all farm types except cattle and sheep farms

The role of marketing initiatives in rural development

This paper was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference of the Colloquium of Organic Researchers (COR). European rural policy faces economic, environmental and demographic challenges. Its recent development has shifted emphasis towards agri-environmental schemes and support for organic farming, refinement of structural funding programmes, and Community Initiatives such as LEADER. At the same time, a transformation and refinement in consumer demand for food is leading to greater market emphasis on the health, environmental conservation and ethical qualities of products. An appropriate alignment of marketing systems, taking advantage of these trends, could also potentially benefit development in rural areas, with both economic and broader implications. This paper presents a framework for the study of organic marketing initiatives (OMIs), their interaction with the communities and overall environment of the regions in which they are located, with the aim of improving the capacity of organic agriculture to generate positive social, economic and environmental effects on rural development, which are of particular policy relevance in the peripheral, disadvantaged regions of Europe

PARAMETRIC DECOMPOSITION OF OUTPUT GROWTH

This paper proposes a tractable approach for analyzing the sources of TFP changes (i.e., technical change, changes in technical and allocative inefficiency, and the scale effect) in a multi-output setting, while retaining the single-equation nature of the econometric procedure used to estimate the parameters of the underlying technology. The proposed approach relies on Bauer’s cost function based decomposition of TFP changes and the duality between input distance and cost functions. The empirical results are based on a sample of 121 UK livestock farms observed over the period 1983-92 and a translog input distance function. It is found that improvements in technical efficiency appear to provide greater potential for enhancing farm returns than that which may be obtained from shifting the production frontier itself. In addition, scale economies and allocative inefficiency are also important sources for TFP changes on UK livestock farms.Cost function based decomposition of TFP, input distance function; UK livestock farms

Agriculture’s inter-industry linkages, aggregation bias and rural policy reforms

As agricultural policy reform and its effects have become increasingly territorialised, analyses which attempt to explain or predict impacts need to be more localised but also identify spillover effects. In addition to the predictions of policy shocks predicted by sectoral partial equilibrium models, local and regional general equilibrium approaches which establish the wider effects of such policy shocks have become popular. However, these neglect a major, underexplored difficulty: agriculture is usually described as a single sector in input-output accounts, whereas policy shocks with differential impacts have effects on other industries which are different to those implied by average input-output coefficients. Regionalisation of aggregated input-output tables adds further to these difficulties. The objective of this paper is to develop a relatively simple method for dealing with these problems. It establishes the theoretical basis for aggregation bias and shows how it can be measured, in two contrasting case study regions in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Having established that this is a significant problem, a simple but effective procedure is demonstrated, based on additional information on variable costs, which transforms policy shocks from a direct change in agricultural output to that transmitted to the suppliers of inputs. This method provides an impact close to that which could be calculated if the general equilibrium system had indeed been disaggregated, and supports use of this approach in impact studies where the researcher does not have the time or funding available for completely disaggregating the agricultural sector’s regional accounts.agricultural and rural development policy evaluation, CAP, input-output analysis, aggregation bias, Agricultural and Food Policy,

COMBINING QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE APPROACHES TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS: THE CASE OF AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION IN LEBANON

While peripheral rural regions in Lebanon face typical problems of lagging development and economic marginalisation, they have not been regarded as a priority for policy-makers, and significant disparities between these and other regions have emerged as a result. Local extensionists have encouraged technological innovation as a means to improving farmers’ livelihoods, and this has led to increasing input use and an intensification of agricultural production. This paper applies contrasting quantitative and qualitative methodologies to analyse the effects of such changes at the level of the overall economy of Lebanon and also to explore the impacts on rural households. A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model explores several simulation scenarios in which agricultural output increases due to intensification in the use of intermediate inputs. The results are evaluated at local level through the use of qualitative case-study analysis carried out in the Hermel region of northeast Lebanon. Quantitative simulations indicate that, while intensification has a positive effect overall on the Lebanese economy, the effects on rural households and the income of farmers are negative; the case-study demonstrates that, at local level, agricultural trade liberalisation, increased agricultural output and greater volatility of commodity prices has resulted in farmers opting for lower input use and more secure market forms of production.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Expert perspectives on the future of the organic food market: results of a Pan-European Delphi study

A Delphi Inquiry was carried out to assess the prospect and conditions affecting the overall growth in the European Market for organic products in the coming decade, and to provide support for research. Countries were classified as established, growing and emerging, according to the state of development of their organic market. The survey confirmed the importance of factors influencing the development of the organic food market: the supply base, the role of supermarkets as sales channels and of government support. Organic Producer Initiatives were seen as important in securing a fair deal for organic producers but managerial capacity and professionalism are key challenges for such organizations

Attitudes towards conversion to organic production of farmers in England

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. The poster presents results of a telephone survey commission by MAFF (now DEFRA) on attitudes of converting and conventional producers to organic production, investigating barriers and motives