Understanding information uptake for organic farming
The approach to this issue has been comprehensive, looking at both the factors hindering uptake, and means in which implementation can be best encouraged. By educating farmers in the advantages of organic agriculture and through innovation management, the project hopes to encourage a bottom-up approach to the broader acceptance of organic farming. More importantly, IDARI also looked at the factors responsible for its slow accession, and means by which these factors could be addressed. In part, economic factors such as the lack of market development or the implementation of delivery support infrastructure have been largely absent. Rural development policy frameworks, it was found, remain the most distinctive manner in which to develop successful market potential. Embedding a strong active policy framework that promotes integrated rural development would therefore, prove to be highly advantageous. Despite the rising demand for organic products in Western Europe, which could serve as a pull factor in Hungary, only large farms responded. The study also revealed that without a broader vision for an integrated implementation, future diffusion will remain on the agri-environmental level and will fail to activate all the various stakeholders involved.
