An Empirical Study On Farmers' Decision-making Process And Relevant Influencing Factors In Adoption Of Organic Foods Production Pattern

Converting the conventional agricultural production into organic agricultural production pattern is one of the options to cope the challenges and competitions from international agro-market due to the China's entry into WTO and environment pollutions caused by the conventional intensive agricultural production. Under the "Family Responsibility System " individual households are independent producers and decision-makers. To successfully and effectively realize the conversion from conventional to organic production pattern in the adequate areas is mostly depending on the farmer's behavior and knowledge on potential market, perception on relevant technologies and the process of decision-making. In this context, it is necessary to study on farmer's decision-making process and relevant affecting factors in adoption of organic food production technologies.Under the hypothesis that economic variability is the most determinant rationality of farmers' decision on production pattern conversion the author conducted an empirical study Yufan village, Yuexi County, Anhui Province, China. Besides the situation analysis the factors affecting farmers' decision-making on organic food production are identified, described and analyzed based on the current production system. Furthermore, based on the analysis of identified affecting factors, the author systematically described farmers' decision-making process. Following conclusions are drawn from the findings of the study:1. Increasing the economic benefit is the essential rationality of farmers to adopt the production pattern of organic foods. And under this basic rationality, there are four factors affecting farmers' decision making process: (1) outside interventions; (2) social-economic, technical s!:ills and qualification characteristics of individuals and households; (3) community's internal features; (4) technical features of organic food production;2. Farmers' decision-making process is a systematic, evolutional and repeating circle from acquainting knowledge and innovations on organic farming to practice and trials, value assessment and finally coming back to practice. In this process the farmers in the community are interactive and demonstration of small number of innovative farmers affects others' decision-making process directly;3. The most serious problem in organic food production is that its value-added economic benefit could not be realized in the current agro-market;4. The production process of organic foods in the village is not yet standardized and institutionalized because of farmers' individual independent decision-making and production practice in a small farming scale.