Non-farmers’ Preference for Assisting with Farm Tasks as a Method of Health Promotion

Abstract

Increasing attention has been focused on promoting the physical and psychological health of non-farmers through farm activities such as home gardening and allotment gardening. In addition to these two farm activities, another farm activity -assisting with farm tasks -has been recently observed among non-farmers. Assuming that certain activities promote the health of non-farmers, specifically assisting with farm tasks near the home, allotment gardening, home gardening, walking, hiking, light physical exercise, home training with gymnastic equipment, and bowling, the preference for assisting with farm tasks compared to other farm and non-farm activities for health promotion was assessed among nonfarmers in Chiba prefecture, Japan. Based on the best-worst scaling approach, assisting with farm tasks and allotment gardening were found to be the least and second-least preferred activities, respectively, while home gardening was found to be more preferred than these two farm activities. According to our results, decreasing farm task difficulty, reducing the travel cost of visiting a farmer, and asking non-farmers to only assist with tasks that can be conducted at their own pace could increase the nonfarmers' preference for assisting with farm tasks as a method of health promotion.

Community-based occupational health promotion programme: an initiative project for Indonesian agricultural farmers

“…Furthermore, the implementation of COHP requires coordination and cooperation to ensure its continuity. This finding is consistent with that of a previous study indicating that assisting with farm tasks as a method of health promotion effectively sustains the programme (Aizaki et al , 2016). The AFs need to communicate their problems through inter-sector and inter-programme between the agriculture department and primary healthcare centres in their areas.…”

Factors that Affect Nonmarket Fruit and Vegetable Receptions: Analyses of Two Cross-Sectional Surveys in Gunma, Japan

“…This relationship has been globally reported and is generally positive and consistent [8][9][10][11]. It has also enabled a deeper understanding of the characteristics and motivations of those engaged in FV gardening [20,[23][24][25]. Additionally, there are several reports on the association between FV receiving and FV intake [17][18][19].…”

Factors Affecting Nonmarket Fruit and Vegetable Receiving: Analyses of Two Cross-Sectional Surveys in Gunma, Japan

“…This relationship has been globally reported, and is generally positive and consistent [18][19][20][21]. It has also given us a deeper understanding of the characteristics and motivation of those engaged in FV gardening [14,[21][22][23]. Additionally, there are several reports on the association between FV receiving and FV intake [11][12][13].…”

“…In this study, we clarified the factors affecting FV receiving frequency. In previous studies, the characteristics and motivation of those who are engaged in FV gardening [14,[21][22][23] have been reported. Furthermore, in the context of obtaining locally-grown produce, the motivation and characteristics were reported by including using farmers' markets [33][34][35][36].…”