Characterising farmers' adoption factors of cleanliness levels of vegetable farming systems

Abstract

'Clean and safe' agricultural products are an important issue among consumers, farmers and governments. Many developing countries develop their produce at various points along the 'clean' continuum based on four different production practices related to the use of synthetic chemicals. Organic farming is applied to technologies which do not use chemicals or synthetic fertilisers during production or processing. Safe-use and pesticide-free practices lie between organic and conventional practices, and are possible steps when converting conventional farms to organic farms. The four farming systems are also viewed as a series of 'clean and safe' farming systems, with conventional vegetable (CV) being the least 'clean and safe', safe-use vegetable (SUV) being more 'clean and safe', pesticide free vegetable (PFV) more so again, and organic vegetable (OV) being the most 'clean and safe' system. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting the adoption of 'clean and safe' farming systems in northern Thailand. To examine the patterns of adoption based on this continuum notion regarding cleanliness level, we used an ordered logistic regression. Farm-level data on vegetable production were collected from random samples of farms using these technologies in northern Thailand. The results of the analysis of farming system adoption show that the important significant factors are membership of farmers' groups, proportion of female family members working on the farm, location, NGO financial sources, and ownership of freehold land. Thus, in developing more 'clean and safe' farming systems and practices the above factors need to be considered.