Assessing Farmers Attitude Towards Organic and Conventional Farming in Basona Worana District, Semen Shoa, Amara Region of Ethiopia

Abstract

Farming is a part of agriculture by which people known as ‘Farmer’ grow crops and keep animals to help them in cultivating the crops for them. There has been a constant debate on organic vs conventional farming system by various experts and also by the farmers performing the systems (Hazell and Wood, 2008). This paper also aims to compare the farmers attitude towards the two farming systems, whether or not they know about the advantages and disadvantages of the farming systems, to identify which system they perform, and to sort out whether they are reasonable or not about the system which they are performing. To do so, a total of 36 households were selected by simple random sampling from the study area. The results depict that the majority (%) of the respondents interviewed are using both organic and conventional farming systems in integration (i.e. organic fertilizers like: compost and animal manures with commercial/synthetic fertilizers); while the minority (%) of the farmers perform conventional agriculture and none of the farmers perform organic farming system solely with most of the farmers are reasonable of the system which they are performing. It was also found out that almost all of the farmers are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the farming systems which are identified scientifically, except some arguments which are addressed on the conclusion section.

Keywords:Organic, Conventional Farming

DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/58-03

Publication date: August 31^st 2019