Assessment of farmers’ preferences for growing particular crops and the correlation with land suitability

The success of agricultural operations is highly dependent on the site selected, which affects sustainability, and it is important to solve problems associated with activities and efficient land use. However, many researchers have selected sites based solely on climate and soil characteristics and have ignored farmer preferences, which has resulted in the failure to meet sustainable agriculture goals, and a proper strategy is therefore required to anticipate related problems. This study was conducted to: (1) analyze plantation development priorities based on the hierarchy of farmers’ preferences, (2) identify the relationship between successful plantations, climate, and soil fertility. The attributes employed to assess farmers’ preferences included price, production, and price stability over the past five years, while annual rainfall, annual temperature, and soil fertility were used to assess land suitability. Farmers’ preferences were analyzed using the discrete choice experiment (DCE) method, and land suitability was analyzed using the fuzzy method. The farmer preference analysis showed that coffee was the priority crop of farmers in most of the research areas, and cocoa was the lowest cultivation priority. Coffee had a higher land suitability index than other plants, ranging from 0.62 to 0.92, and it was dominant within the optimal suitability class. Clove, pepper, and cocoa plants belonged to the moderate land suitability class with indexes of 0.6–0.91, 0.56–0.88, and 0.4–0.86 for pepper, clove, and cocoa, respectively. A regression analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between the priority of cultivated plants based on farmers’ preference and land suitability, and a positive relationship (moderate strength) was determined. These research results show that when selecting priority crops, 21% of farmers’ decisions are influenced by land suitability.