Study On The Factors Affecting Organic Farming In Pakistan

Agriculture is the source of food,income,and employment for most of the population in Pakistan.The government prioritizes the commercialization of agriculture through conventional means for overall economic development.But declining soil fertility,negative repercussions on the environment,and health of farmers due to the use of agrochemicals and market demand reinforced the organic movement in Pakistan.Climate change and food insecurity are other vital issues the Pakistan agriculture sector should deal with them.Developed countries first introduced organic farming to minimize environmental impacts attributed to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides’ intensive use to enhance production yield.However,organic farming offers environmentally sound methodologies for crop production.Challenges in the adoption of organic farming and the production cycle have been investigated in many studies,but the problems still unclear.However,the recognized advantages of organic farming,concerns remain over the differences in organic farms’ productivity and financial sustainability compared to conventional farming competitors.Studies on adoption attitude have neglected considering the implementation time of organic agriculture and the effect of time-sensitive elements.Besides,the diffusion approach does not consider why a farmer would adopt organic farming before other farmers.Furthermore also neglect the farm structure which directly linked with productivity and investment.Organic farming is more sensitive due to dependence on natural biodiversity and unsecure farmland is real threat to its sustainability.The objective of this study to fulfil this literature gap and provide enough evidence to have a comprehensive analysis of organic farming.This study analyzes primary data obtained from 612 farms—301 organic and 311 conventional—across three central Punjab districts,Pakistan,to assess the concern mentioned above in the specific country context.Punjab is the most populous province and considers as the backbone of the agricultural sector of Pakistan.The total farmland of Punjab is 16.8 million hectares,which 76%of the total farmland of Pakistan.Firstly,we assess organic farming’s economic factors by evaluating the yield and financial factors of both farming methods.We identified that cultivating organic crops is advantageous as traditional crops regardless of the former’s low yields,given the lower production expenditure and higher commodity prices.Nevertheless,both kinds of farming suffer from a‘middle man’cartel.Additionally,organic crops’ return on investment of organic crops is also significant,indicating that farmers may obtain loftier returns through transitioning from conventional crops to organic crops.Overall,organic input costs are 19.09%lower than conventional crops.Secondly,we analyzed non-economic factors with three steps.The Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP)was employed to evaluate the farmer’s goal and intentions;goals were crucial to their acceptance of organic farming;furthermore,young farmers and farmers with risk-inclined attitudes were more prone to adopting organic farming.Furthermore,principal component analysis(PCA)summarizes the farmers’ opinions and approaches and groups them into components.Lastly,survival Analysis(SA)was performed for the empirical analysis because it enables the analysis of organic farming’s decision-making and diffusion characteristics.Farmers’goals,agricultural policies,and attitude towards risk,as covariates in the survival analysis.Lastly,analysed the farm structure impact on organic farming in terms of increment of efficiency,yield,and investment in soil-improving activities by using farm-level A multivariate Tobit model that captured the probable substitute and investment choices,as well as the endogenous nature of land tenure arrangements,had been employed in this analysis.Inclusively,the outcomes are effective collectively.They suggest that small-scale farmers easily adopt organic farming or those with small land and participate in another kind of business or job.Large scale farmers or who purely depend on agriculture take more time.Most farmers are laymen and do not have the concern to other factors like environment or society,only focusing on financial benefit.Unsecure land arrangements also have negative impact on organic productivity.Mostly farmers,focus on short term benefit and intensive use of synthetic fertilizers reduce the soil fertility.Organic farming needs 24 to 36 months to create natural biodiversity which is hard time for newly converted farm.The government should regulate land contracts and also introduce land reforms.Hence,the more formal and collective effort required to promote organic farming.The policymakers and stakeholders should focus on farmers and society’s awareness toward sustainable use of natural resources despite the only focus on the intensive use of synthetic inputs.Organic farming’s initial acceptance by farmers commercially will be fundamentally affected by organic consumer demand and market prices,ultimately determining whether organic farming production endures.Lastly,the government should not concentrate merely on basic economic factors and consider the non-economic variables to promote organic farming in Pakistan.