Factors underlying German farmers' intention to adopt mixed cropping

Vanessa Bonke and Oliver Musshoff

No 289821, 172nd EAAE Seminar, May 28-29, 2019, Brussels, Belgium from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Mixed cropping, the simultaneous cultivation of two or more coexisting crops in one field, offers the possibility to increase biodiversity within farming systems. However, adoption of mixed cropping systems is challenging for farmers, as the agricultural sector has evolved around mono stands over the past decades and path dependencies have emerged. Utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior as the main framework, this paper studies the psychological factors underlying German farmers’ intention to adopt mixed cropping. The results demonstrate that perceived eco-logical benefits positively influence a farmer’s attitude towards mixed cropping. Attitude, per-ceived behavioral control, group norm, and subjective norm explain over 49% in farmer’s inten-tion to adopt mixed cropping. A slightly negative influence of subjective norm indicates the ad-vantageousness of voluntary agri-environmental scheme to facilitate adoption. Identified obsta-cles suggest that actors along the value chain have to be addressed and that further research is needed to increase adoption in the long-run.

Keywords: Agricultural; and; Food; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05-29
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaa172:289821

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.289821

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