In the conversion to organic, the age of producers is another barrier. Table 3 shows that the probability of the conversion dropped substantially as producers become older. With the base group of 30 or young, the age group 31 60 has a probability of 20% lower in adopting organic farming, and the group 61 or older has a drop of 24%. It makes sense that the shorter planning horizons for older farmers offered less time to recapture investment costs and capture the long-term benefits. In addition, it was claimed that as one ages, the avoidance of risk becomes more important than expected future higher returns . The conversion to organic farming also demands the time and efforts to assimilate organic knowledge and methods, and likely expose farmers to lower yields and non-premium price in the transition period, and these surely weigh in on farmers decision on organic farming.The chance of conversion is 13% higher for farmers who had education of technical school or higher than farmers with just high-school diploma or lower. This conformed a previous claim that farmers with some college education had higher odds of adopting organic farming.

However, the impact of education was not observed in conventional farmers and those with mixed enterprises. The lack of observations on mixed enterprise group may be the root of the result. While some results of this study bear resemblances to previous studies, there are some noteworthy differences identified. The impact of off-farm job is one of them. Our model was not in supportive of the claim that there exists an inverse relationship between working off-farm and the adoption of organic farming because off-farm job reduce the availability of labor and hence impedes organic farming practices. On the contrary, dutch bucket hydroponic the impact of off-farm jobs in our model lead to an increased likelihood of organic conversion, which may reflect the influence of the enhanced risk tolerance due to extra income from off-farm jobs. The absence of off-farm job variable led to substantial changes in parameters of other variables in the model, so it, though less significant in statistics, was retained in the model. The further clarification hinges on the future studies with more observations and elaborated instruments related off-farm job. Analysis of the large survey in the Southern states came up with a few contributing factors in farmers’ choice of conversion to organic production. The pool of factors comprise barriers and stimuli, each of them have been discussed in detail in the previous section. In view of potential impacts and the efficient way of improve the adoption of organic farming, the four factors of risk aversion, the age of operators, and the size of farms, and marketing channels deserve further elaboration.

Organic farming is still at its early stage, there exist tremendous uncertainty in both production and marketing process. For most risk version farmers, an acceptable way to follow was doing by the top dog. Nevertheless the exemplars available at this stage are quite limited. A way to increase farmers’ expose to and know those successful front runners is to organize more workshops and training.Land grant universities and USDA agencies such as FSA and RMA could play a more active role in helping farmers overcome the risk barrier. The age of operators and its adverse impact certainly deserve multiple looks.From 2012 census data, about 62% of farmers were 55 or older, which was 17years older than the age of average American workers. Old operators was significant less likely to go organic. While it isn’t realistic to expect a change of age structure shortly, it makes sense to support young farmers in land requisition and in tax relief. Currently, the old operators’ ownership of expensive land and the existing subsidy programs give the elder an edge to stay in farming, which forms a hindrance of the conversion to organic farming. An urgent need is to have some stimulus mechanisms to expedite the influx of the young into farming business. The change of land tenures and government subsidy programs is needed to support the business of the young beginning farmers.