FACTORS AFFECTING ATTITUDE OF FARMERS TOWARD ORGANIC FARMING IN KHUZESTAN, IRAN

Organic farming is assumed to have the capacity to help reduction of negative economic, social and environmental impacts of green revolution, by supporting small scale farmers, meeting consumers’ needs, and decrease in using chemical inputs. In line with this, during 2014-2015, a survey study was undertaken to investigate the factors affect farmers’ attitudes towards organic farming. A random sample of 121 farmers was selected from west part of Iran. A multi-scale questionnaire to measure variables of general attitude toward organic farming, knowledge, perception toward economic, ecological and social goals of organic farming, perceived barriers and benefits of organic farming, and information channels, was administered to collect data. Analyzing data revealed that none of the respondents manages their farms based on organic farming style. They even do not perform soil test to learn about optimal consumption limit of fertilizers. They use higher rate of urea consumption than the optimal limit of 50 kg/ha advised by experts. Although, respondents’ knowledge and attitude toward organic farming were relatively moderate (2.38 and 2.52 out of 5, respectively), their perception towards organic farming barriers (3.48 out of 5) and social goals (3.6 out of 5) showed a better status. They also highly perceived benefits, economic and ecological goals of organic farming. At last, the study concluded that to plan for changing farmers attitude to cultivate based on organic farming a mixture of significant predictor factors including perception about ecological goals (β=0.55), perceived barriers (β=-0.54), knowledge (β=0.30) and social goals (β=0.25) must be taken into attention.