Can the adoption of organic farming be predicted by biogeographic factors? A French case study

Abstract

Organic farming adoption is on the rise in many countries, due to increased scientific evidence and growing awareness of farmers, citizens, governments and other stakeholders of its more sustainable nature. Various studies have investigated the socio-economic drivers (e.g., consumer demand, support measures, agricultural policies) of organic farming adoption, but little is known about whether biogeographic factors could also be associated with variation in rates of organically managed farms in certain regions within countries. We investigate whether biogeographic factors can explain variation in the proportion of land under organic farming in French departments. The proportion of land under organic farming increased with decreasing latitude, increasing department area and altitude. Non-significant factors were number of plant taxa, proportion of Natura 2000 protected areas, connectivity, longitude and department population. When leaving out of the model these non-significant factors, also altitude became non-significant. These results were robust to controlling for spatial autocorrelation. Larger and southern French departments tend to have a greater adoption of organic farming, possibly because of the more extensive nature of agriculture in such regions. Biogeographic factors have been neglected in investigations of the drivers of organic farming adoption, but may have an important explanatory value.