Measuring Tea Farmers' Perceptions of Sustainable Agriculture and Factors Affecting This Perception in Rize Province of Turkey

Abstract

Sustainable agriculture highly depends on the actions taken by the farmers and their ability to make a decision by using their knowledge and information efficiently. Therefore, farmers' perception needs to transfer from a technocratic approach to a social approach for promoting sustainable agriculture. This study was planned to analyze the tea growers' perception of sustainable agriculture in Rize Province. For this reason, a stratified sample of 138 tea farmers was contacted to get their perceptions about predefined sustainable farming practices. A total of 60 items were factor analyzed and ultimately 33 items in four main factors, namely, policy, social, environmental, and economic were identified to construct a sustainability perception index. Considering this index score, farmers' perceptions were divided into three groups including low, medium, and high-level perception. The explanatory variables were selected from the socioeconomic characteristics and communication behavior of farmers. The model results showed that education level, age, participation in farming events, watching television, and using the internet affected farmers' perception of sustainable farming in the region. Government should focus on policy-related issues like illegal tea entry, social factors like increasing the communication and socialization level among stakeholders, and environmental problems as a result of farm practices through arranging appropriate workshops.