Agents' perceptions of structure: How Illinois organic farmers view political, economic, social, and ecological factors

Leslie Duram

Agriculture and Human Values, 2000, vol. 17, issue 1, 35-48

Abstract: Various structural factors influenceorganic farmer decision-making. Analyses that combinestructure and agency provide an opportunity forunderstanding farmers' perceptions of the political,economic, and social ``world'' in which they operate.Rich conversational interviews, conducted with twentycertified organic farmers in Illinois and analyzedwith multiple qualitative methods, show how farmersmediate structural concerns. In addition to political,economic, and social structures, a fourth structure isneeded. Indeed these organic farmers emphasize theimportance of ecological factors in theirdecision-making. Within the perceived economic,political, social, and ecological structures, numeroustopics (i.e., marketing, policy, family, ecosystems)and subtopics (i.e., diversification, farm programs,traditions, soils) exist. Farmers' quotations providedetailed information of how they view and mediatestructures in their daily on-farm decision-making. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000

Keywords: Agency; Alternative agriculture; Farmer decision-making; Organic farming; Perception; Structures (economic; political; social; ecological) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1007632810301 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:17:y:2000:i:1:p:35-48

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1023/A:1007632810301

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().