ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Factors Affecting Wheat Farmers’ Attitudes
toward Organic Farming
Ali Shams, Zahra Hooshmandan Moghaddam Fard
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Department of Agricultural Extension, Communication, and Rural Development,
University of Zanjan, Iran
Submission date: 2017-01-29
Final revision date: 2017-03-10
Acceptance date: 2017-03-12
Online publication date: 2017-08-24
Publication date: 2017-09-28
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2017;26(5):2207-2214
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ABSTRACT
In recent years the focus on organic farming has been emphasised because of the negative effects of
conventional farming. Any persuasion geared toward making farmers adopt organic farming methods
requires an investigation of their current attitude toward organic farming. The main purpose of this
descriptive-correlational study was to investigate the effective factors that determine farmers’ attitudes
toward organic farming. The statistical population consisted of all the wheat farmers in the Khodabande
township (N = 24,350), of whom 275 were identified based on Cochran’s sampling formula and through
a stratified, randomised sampling method. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire (whose
validity was verified by a panel of experts in related fields); to check its reliability, a Cronbach’s alpha
coefficient was calculated to equal 0.78. The results showed that the attitude of the majority of respondents
toward organic farming, at 50.9 percent, was positive, and the attitude of the other 49.1 percent was
neutral. Correlation analysis revealed that age, family household number, and experience had a negative
meaningful correlation with the farmers’ attitude, but education, income, and knowledge of organic farming
had a positive meaningful correlation. Comparison analysis showed that there were significant differences
between farmers’ attitudes toward organic farming based on the different cultivation methods as well as the
use of pesticides and herbicides. Logistical regression analysis revealed that the factors that significantly
(p<0.05) affected farmers’ attitudes toward organic farming included the farmer’s experience, income, and
their knowledge of organic farming.