Motivations towards farming in Lebanon: a comparison between organic and conventional farmers
2004
Salame, N.
The research work focuses on Lebanese farmers' behaviour, attitudes and beliefs with regards to farming activity, and specifically investigates the motivations that lie behind their choices. The work also aims to explore AUB-assisted conventional farmers' barriers or risks for not converting to organic farming. The study applied the Means-End Chain theory paired with the laddering methodology, adopting the hard laddering approach. During a four-week fieldwork in Lebanon, collective, in-depth interviews were carried out with two groups of farmers (one of 16 HB organic farmers and one of 17 AUB-assisted conventional producers) by administering a self-completed questionnaire. The "Mecanalyst Software" was used for the analysis of the data collected through the laddering interviews. The software constructs an implication matrix that indicates how often concepts have been mentioned and linked to each other, both directly and indirectly. Results show that organic farmers have two paths of reasoning while conventional farmers have just one path. Love for family is the most important value for both groups, and to have a satisfactory income is central in the cognitive structure of Lebanese conventional farmers.
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