Organic Farming And The Need For Education

BUS7AM Percentage Weighting of this Assignment

Organic Farming

Organic food represents a considerable market segment within the global food industry as these products are believed to be safer and the nutritious than their counterparts that are grown by conventional farming (Ramdhani and Santosa 2012). The organic farming had already set its paws in the first world country, it also extending its use in other countries such as India, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan (Andrade et al. 2017). Myanmar has have a variety of geographical and climatic regions that has a potentiality to export various agricultural products in the world market. The environment and the agriculture are threatened by the indiscriminate use of modern technologies (Ramdhani and Santosa 2012). The indiscriminate use of the harmful chemical fertilisers have modified the ecosystem because of their hazardous effect. Consumption of the chemical; containing food might cause several damages to the body (Forman and Silverstein 2012). Although organic farming has been introduced in many countries, farmers are always not comfortable in using organic farming due to the lack of knowledge and lack of proper training to the farmers who had been practicing organic farming (Andrade et al. 2017). The organic farming practices are location specific and many of the indigenous farmers have developed their own methods of the farming, which are going to be lost if not documented properly. In order to understand the need of the farmer it is essential to understand the behaviour of the farmers towards the practice. As per the theoretical framework, the behaviour of a farmer is guided by different kinds of considerations like knowledge of organic farming, cost associated organic farming, usefulness of organic farming, the social and the environmental factors (Naik et al. 2018). Beginning farmer training and program development have been found to have developed in many of the countries and according to a study conducted by (Läpple and Kelley 2013) it has been found that most of the beginners farmers do not contain enough knowledge about the tools and the techniques used in organic farming. The organic farming has been location specific and hence due to lack of proper documentation of the procedures, some of the practices have become extinct (Naik et al. 2018). Furthermore, it has been found that the beginner’s farmer training procedure and program development about the transition from conventional farming to organic farming is one of the most significant yet one of the poorly understood sector of the food system and agricultural research (Tiedemann and Latacz?Lohmann 2013). Apart from the importance of the organic farming, the main reason behind this research is that till now very few researches have been done associated to the perception of the farmers regarding their needs in developing their skills in organic farming (Adesope et al. 2016). Although the educational training and education is prevalent world-wide, focussing on the adult agricultural education is not much prevalent.

Conventional Farming

The main keywords that will be used for searching the literary sources for the literature review section of this research proposal are “ Organic Farming’, “conventional farming”, “Organic foods”, “farmers and organic farming’

Organic farming-Organic farming can be defined as a technique that includes cultivation of the plants and rearing of animals in natural methods. It might include the use of the biological compounds to improve farming, avoiding the use of the synthetic substances for the maintenance of the fertility of the soil and minimising the ecological balance of nature (Tuomisto et al. 2015).

Conventional farming- Conventional farming on the other hand involves typed of farming that uses unnatural methods of farming like the use of the chemical and the synthetic fertilisers, chemical fertilisers , weedicides and fungicides (Tuomisto et al. 2015).

According to the Office of the National Statistics (2017), in UK, the government promotes organic farming and this is reflected in its statistics. According to Office of the National Statistics (2017), 517 thousand hectares of land in UK are used of organic farming and 64% of land is accounted for the permanent grassland for the organic farming in UK. Thus in order to promote organic farming, the knowledge of the farmers is also important.

Niewolny, K. L., and Lillard, P. T. 2016. Expanding the boundaries of beginning farmer training and program development: A review of contemporary initiatives to cultivate a new generation of American farmers. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 1(1), pp. 65-88.

In relation to the assessment of the needs of the farmer related to organic farming, Niewolny and Lillard (2016) have stated that adult agricultural education to the farmers practicing traditional farming methods have taken on new patterns and for supporting and sustaining the new generation of the farmers. It is vitalising the new opportunities for generating and exchanging the knowledge and information for a sustainable organic farming. Very little is known about the ways in which the adult education acts as a conduit between the beginner agriculturist and a wider social structure that influences the food and the farming system. The systematic review of this paper leads one to believe to the fact that agricultural educations are needed, that should be taught to the farmers by registered agriculturists. As per the needs assessment carried out it can be said that in most of the cases the farmers were not aware of the environmental effects that the chemical fertiliser possess. Furthermore, it can also be understand from this systematic review that integration of the online educational programs or involving the media in farmer’s education can have beneficial effect in the improvement of knowledge of organic farming.

The Importance of Organic Farming Education

Panneerselvam et al. (2012) conducted a study in order to examine the level of experience and knowledge of the Indian farmers in the domain of the organic farming. The study also covered the benefits and the barriers behind the adaptation of the organic farming. The author selected 40 different farmers from different states of West-Bengal like Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The analysis of the results highlighted that in comparison to the conventional procedure of farming, the organic farming has limited amount of exposure through marketing. This of exposure has led to decrease in the level of knowledge ad awareness of the farmers in organic farming. Moreover, lack of institutional support leads to decrease in the level of adaptation of the organic farming procedure. The study conducted by Panneerselvam et al. (2012) also highlighted that organic farming leads to reduction in the level overall production or the yield. This leads to decrease in the level of adaptation of the procedure of organic farming among the farmers. Increase in the level of governmental support will lead to increase in the adaptation of the organic farming.

Sutherland et al. (2012) conducted a search in order to study the change management process that is required to be undertaken in order to implement the practice of the organic farming among the farmers who mainly practice conventional farming. The authors mainly highlighted boarder conceptualization of the major learning needs of the organic farming among the farmers. The analysis of the results highlighted that the major change management principle under any farming bodies is the limited path dependency. Increase in the level of knowledge lock-in is necessary in order to increase the overall adaptation of the organic farming among the conventional farming workers and this can be achieve through education and learned experience. Education will be followed by active assessment and new activities triggered by a period of consolidation before the overall change is implemented. The intervention may be most effective in order to trigger events. The authors concluded that the as a result of the “path dependency” in the process of the organic farming, the major change in the farming practice will occur in response of the trigger events after which the managers of the farm will intensify their consolidation in organic farming. Over the rime, the new practices will help in achieving the anticipated aims of the process leading to further dependency. The recognition of the pattern of the path-dependency will help in drawing new governmental policy for the application of the new farming approach. The main strength of the study is, it is based on qualitative interview among the conventional and the organic farming farmers. However, the limitation of the study s it is based on the two English case studies and no direct interview was conducted.

Transitioning from Conventional to Organic Farming

A large number of literary sources have demonstrated the importance of “good and healthy farming’ ideals to the farming practice. In this paper by Sutherland and Darnhofer (2012) the authors have tried to develop an empirical study of the organic and the conventional farmers focussing on the transition of the conventional framing to organic farming. This paper have also helped us to understand a nuanced conceptualisation of how changes occur in good farming and to explore the implications in the identification of the changing farming practice. According to the paper, many of the farmers have the predetermined notion that the organic farming is a ‘joke; and is not considered to be a good method of farming. Furthermore, farming without the chemical fertilisers was previously thought to be impossible. As per the interviews conducted with the farmers, it was known that in most of the cases, the failure of organic farming or its high cost is due to the lack of proper training to the farmers about the cost effective means of organic farming. One of the limitation of this paper is that the low sample size of the farmers, which might not be applicable to the generalised population.

In spite of the benefits that organic farming brings to the environment, the adoption rates of the organic farming among the farmers are quite low. Tiraieyari, Hamzah and Samah (2017) have outlined some of the findings of the challenges faced by the present day farmers to adopt organic farming. One of the main important factor is land issue. Farmers have admitted land issue to be their primary challenge, especially the ones who do not own their land for initiating organic farming.

Another factor identified by the author is the shortage of the labour. Since the activities of the organic farming are done annually and most of the organic technologies require manpower, they have greater needs for man power in comparison to the conventional farming. Due to the lack of social labour, the organic farmers have to rely deeply on the foreign labours for execution of their work (Tuck et al. 2017). One of the most important challenges identified by the farmers are the lack of training and the extension services.  The farmers lacked extension services for the organic farming. No such trainings are normally provided to the farmers (Tiraieyari, Hamzah and Samah 2017). The organic farmers require information via multiple channels such as the members of the association of the farmers, the colleagues. The strength of this article is that it has reviewed the status of the sustainable agriculture and organic farming in Malaysia. It can be known from the study that, the small scale producers have to rely upon the friends and the media for receiving any information on the organic farming. Hence, the program have stated that government should play an important role in the in the adoption of the organic farming program.

Challenges Faced by Farmers to Adopt Organic Farming

The research conducted by Yadav et al. (2013) was based on the aim to understand the training needs of the farmers under the domain of organic farming. The research mainly highlighted whether or not the training needs of the farmers changes with respect to their age, educational qualification and overall professional experience. Yadav et al. (2013) conducted an exploratory research based on the training needs of the farmers who cultivate in Himachal Pradesh State Department of Agriculture in India. Their level of knowledge was accessed in the domain of organic farming. They study conducted over 65 extension officers selected randomly from 12 different districts of Himachal Pradesh. The training needs were recorded based on self-reported methods. The researcher mainly focused on the 10 different needs of the organic farming. The needs mainly included composting or vermin-composting, leaf manuring or green manuring, bio-fertilizers, crop rotation, bio-dynamic farming, record keeping, certification standards, packaging/ grading and marketing of organic procedure. The analysis of the results highlighted that there is no significant relationship between age, educational qualification or the service experience of the farmers with the training needs. In order to achieve the successful implementation of organic farming among the farmers of the Himachal Pradesh, emphasis must be given to improvement knowledge in the seven different identified fields of organic farming. The main limitations of the research are it was conducted from the training needs and the perspective of the farmers of the Himachal Pradesh who operates under the diverse climatic condition, which is unlike the other climatic environment of the world. Moreover, the experience of the farmers was conducted based on 2011. Tuck et al. (2014) stated that process of organic farming has improved since 2011 and thus the level of knowledge in order to increase the level of organic farming will vary.

There are two types of data in the research first is the primary research and secondary research. The secondary data was collected from the literary articles obtained through the online search in the electronic database. The secondary data was used to highlight the gaps in the research and also used frame the questionnaire that will be used for the conduction of the interview among the farmers for the qualitative research. The conduction of the secondary research was based on the search of the research articles online with the use of the keywords.

In order to collect the primary data, the interview will be conducted among 10 farmers who have experienced in the conventional farming. The main inclusion criteria for the recruitment of the farmers include:

Random probability sampling was done in order to conduct the interview. According to Acharya et al. (2013), random probability sampling helps in the elimination of the sampling bias.

The main method of data collection will include interview with open-ended questionnaire. According to Jacob and Furgerson (2012) open-ended questionnaire helps the respondents in sharing if their own ideas thoughts and feeling. On the other hand, close ended questionnaire force the respondents to response with the limited boundary and this might lead to biased response. The detailed list of the interview questions that will be used in the research is

Narrative analysis will be used for the analysis of the qualitative data gathered in the interview. According to Lewis (2015) narrative data analysis is the most common method that is used for the qualitative research. It helps to find the common patters across the data set. The main steps for narrative data analysis include getting familiar with the data by reading and re-reading it. This will be followed by coding or labelling of the data from the whole text of the interview. Then themes are searched with boarder pattern of meaning followed by naming of the themes and analysis of the theme. The analysis of the data will also be done on the basis of the age, qualification and professional experience of the farmers in order to highlight the connection of the level of knowledge with these three parameters.

The future scope of the research will deal with how the farmers who are trained in the domain of the organic farming is helping to improve the overall yield of the cultivation. The future scope of the research will mainly be directed towards a quantitative analysis of the production and the quality yield of the crop best on the cost-effectiveness of the overall farming process. The research will also analyse how organic farming helps to increase the overall convenience of the research. The future scope of the research will be based on the research conducted by Conti et al. (2014). The research conducted by Conti et al. (2014) stated that choice of organic farming could be used as an alternative of the conventional farming technique on the parameter of the improvement in the quality of the crops, lower environmental impact and increase in the rate of the market price. However, organic farming does not deal with increase in the overall yield of the crops. Here the authors have conducted their research on strawberry.

In order to understand the responses of the farmers related to needs of education or training on organic farming, 10 farmers will selected for the interview for assessing the needs of the farmers. One of the limitation of this research proposal is the small sample size. The small sample size is due to the availability of less time and constraints in framing. A small sample size impacts on the reliability of the result obtained as it might lead to higher variability that might lead to bias. One of the most common bias that can occur due to small sample size is the non-response bias. Some of the potential farmers practicing conventional farming might want to answer the questions, or might not get the opportunity to participate in the study. The results hence obtained will be generalised and might not represent the entire population.

References

Acharya, A.S., Prakash, A., Saxena, P. and Nigam, A., 2013. Sampling: Why and how of it. Indian Journal of Medical Specialities, 4(2), pp.330-333.

Adesope, O.M., Matthews-Njoku, E.C., Oguzor, N.S. and Ugwuja, V.C., 2012. Effect of socio-economic characteristics of farmers on their adoption of organic farming practices. In Crop Production Technologies. InTech.

ANDRADE, C.A.W., MIGUEL, A.C.A., Spricigo, P.C., DIAS, C.T.D.S. and Jacomino, A.P., 2017. Comparison of quality between organic and conventional strawberries from multiple farms. Revista Brasileira de Fruticultura, 39(2).

Conti, S., Villari, G., Faugno, S., Melchionna, G., Somma, S. and Caruso, G., 2014. Effects of organic vs. conventional farming system on yield and quality of strawberry grown as an annual or biennial crop in southern Italy. Scientia Horticulturae, 180, pp.63-71.

Forman, J. and Silverstein, J., 2012. Organic foods: health and environmental advantages and disadvantages. Pediatrics, pp.peds-2012.

Jacob, S.A. and Furgerson, S.P., 2012. Writing interview protocols and conducting interviews: Tips for students new to the field of qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 17(42), pp.1-10.

Läpple, D. and Kelley, H., 2013. Understanding the uptake of organic farming: Accounting for heterogeneities among Irish farmers. Ecological Economics, 88, pp.11-19.

Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.

Naik, M.H., Srivastava, S.R., Godara, A.K. and Yadav, V.S., 2016. Knowledge level about organic farming in Haryana. Indian Research Journal of Extension Education, 9(1), pp.50-53.

Niewolny, K. L., and Lillard, P. T. 2016. Expanding the boundaries of beginning farmer training and program development: A review of contemporary initiatives to cultivate a new generation of American farmers. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 1(1), pp. 65-88.

Office of the National Statistics. 2017. Organic farming statistics 2017. Access date: 1^st of January 2019. Retrieved from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/758533/organics-statsnotice-23nov18.pdf

Panneerselvam, P., Halberg, N., Vaarst, M. and Hermansen, J.E., 2012. Indian farmers’ experience with and perceptions of organic farming. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 27(2), pp.157-169.

Ramdhani, M.A. and Santosa, E., 2012. Key Succes Factors for Organic Farming Development. International Journal of Basic and Applied Science, 1(1), pp.7-13.

Sutherland, L. A., and Darnhofer, I. 2012. Of organic farmers and ‘good farmers’: Changing habitus in rural England. Journal of Rural Studies, 28(3), pp. 232-240.

Sutherland, L.A., Burton, R.J., Ingram, J., Blackstock, K., Slee, B. and Gotts, N., 2012. Triggering change: towards a conceptualisation of major change processes in farm decision-making. Journal of environmental management, 104, pp.142-151.

Tiedemann, T. and Latacz?Lohmann, U., 2013. Production risk and technical efficiency in organic and conventional agriculture–the case of arable farms in Germany. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 64(1), pp.73-96.

Tiraieyari, N., Hamzah, A., and Samah, B. A. 2017. Organic farming and sustainable agriculture in Malaysia: organic farmers’ challenges towards adoption. Sustainable Development of Organic Agriculture: Historical Perspectives, p. 135.

Tuck, S.L., Winqvist, C., Mota, F., Ahnström, J., Turnbull, L.A. and Bengtsson, J., 2014. Land?use intensity and the effects of organic farming on biodiversity: a hierarchical meta?analysis. Journal of Applied Ecology, 51(3), pp.746-755.

Tuck, S.L., Winqvist, C., Mota, F., Ahnström, J., Turnbull, L.A. and Bengtsson, J., 2014. Land?use intensity and the effects of organic farming on biodiversity: a hierarchical meta?analysis. Journal of Applied Ecology, 51(3), pp.746-755.

Tuomisto, H.L., Hodge, I.D., Riordan, P. and Macdonald, D.W., 2012. Does organic farming reduce environmental impacts?–A meta-analysis of European research. Journal of environmental management, 112, pp.309-320.

Yadav, D.S., Sood, P., Thakur, S.K. and Choudhary, A.K., 2013. Assessing the training needs of agricultural extension workers about organic farming in the North-Western Himalayas. Journal of Organic Systems, 8(1), pp.17-27.

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