Barriers to conversion to organic farming: A case study in Babol County in Iran

Organic farming offers a more sustainable alternative to conventional agricultural production and its adoption is not an easy option for farmers, since it carries several barriers with it. The main purpose of this study was to identify these barriers in Babol County in Iran. A sample size of 150 farmers was selected for this research by using simple random sampling method. The result of factor analysis showed that major barriers or obstacles to the adoption of organic farming between farmers were: productive, natural, attitude and knowledge, infrastructural, institutional and economical barriers. These factors explained about 68% of the total variance of the research variables.