Factors impacting producer marketing through community supported agriculture

Abstract

Nowadays, consumers have become increasingly aware of their local food system as a result of concerning about health and nutrition, food safety and sustainability, and local economic development. This transitional shift from global to direct-to-consumer farm operations has increased the demand for locally produced foods. As an alternative, community supported agriculture (CSA), a direct and sustainable food channel, has gained tremendous popularity in the US. Despite the interest garnered by local agriculture and CSA, relatively few studies have empirically tested the determinants of why this marketing phenomenon has grown so rapidly. The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that drive producers to market their products through CSA by using a county-level data set from the US. Results using a Tobit model indicate that specific operator characteristics, such as young and female operators and those engaged in farming as primary occupation, play a strongly positive role in the likelihood of marketing through CSA; farms with small size, rented land, and engagement in growing vegetables, melons, fruits and tree nut crops are more interested in marketing via CSA; households with higher income and females significantly increase the share of farms marketing through CSA; presence of children and seniors and being married are negatively related to the demand for CSA foods. Moreover, counties with higher density of population, establishments-supermarket and other grocery stores, and legislation or active programs that encourage local food consumption tend to encourage more farms marketing through CSA.

Evaluating factors influencing Tennessee and Kentucky farmers’ willingness to sell produce through fresh stop markets

“…We postulated that the farmers' age is negatively correlated with farmers' willingness to sell produce through FSMs. As suggested by previous studies, older farmers have shorter planning horizons and, thus, might be less likely to change or modify their production and marketing strategies (Walton et al, 2008;Zhong et al, 2016;Edge et al, 2018;Dong et al, 2019). On the other hand, we hypothesized that education could be positively but also negatively correlated with farmers' willingness to sell produce through FSMs.…”

Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Environment, Economy, Society, and Policy

“…The new governance arrangements also give rise to an increase in the control of local communities over their own food systems and the emergence of concepts such as food sovereignty [261,[277][278][279][280][281][282][283]. Different models of agriculture and food systems emphasize the role of the community and the importance of its active participation, such as community-supported agriculture [263,388,[389][390][391][392][393][394][395][396]397], community gardens [218,390,[398][399][400], community seed banks [196], community kitchens [390], and community-based fisheries [401]. This focus on participation led to the emergence of different participatory approaches that do not only cover the whole food chain (from production to consumption), but also associated activities such as participatory research [290,[402][403][404][405], participatory breeding [307,406], and participatory certification [407,408].…”

Motivating Factors of Farmers to Engage Vegetable-based Agribusiness in East Java and Bali, Indonesia

“…Several studies have analyzed such factors, but the results are still inconsistent and contradicting one another (among others: Nandi, Gowdru, & Bokelmann, 2017; resulting in high transaction costs (TCs (Odiaka, Osupala, & Odiaka, 2013;Sriwichailamphan & Sucharidtham, 2014). Similar studies on other factors affecting farmers' decision related to intensive farming and technology adoption also measure the determinants at the same weightiness (Adanacioglu, 2017;Dong, Campbell, & Rabinowitz, 2019;Durán & Wives, 2018). This is because the importance of every determinant is scaled at the same degree, which mostly employed regression models to find significant determinants.…”