Spatial patterns of organic agriculture adoption: Evidence from Honduras
By M. Wollni, Camilla Andersson. 2014
235 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In low potential agricultural areas like the Honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion, organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty. We use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to convert to organic agriculture. Previous studies have emphasized the role of spatial patterns in the diffusion and adoption of agricultural technologies in general and organic agriculture in particular. These spatial patterns can result from a variety of underlying factors. In this article we test various potential explanations, including the availability of information in the farmer's neighborhood, social conformity concerns and perceived positive external effects of the adoption decision, in a spatially explicit adoption model. We find that farmers who believe to act in accordance with their neighbors' expectations and with greater availability of information in their neighborhood network are more likely to adopt organic agriculture. Furthermore, perceived positive productivity spillovers to neighboring plots decrease the probability of adoption. We discuss the implications of our findings for the dissemination of sustainable agricultural technologies in low-potential agricultural areas in developing countries.
Subfields: Business and International Management, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c62b8b7e622b45242c5a139aca0c6505a29c3df
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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Citations in the corpus
- Effect of Certified Organic Production Systems on Poverty among Smallholder Farmers: Empirical Evidence from Kenya (2015, result): “Similar findings were reported by Wollni and Andersson (2014), where social conformity and increasing the information network among farmers increased the probability of adopting organic farming in Honduras.”