Abstract

Although healthy food, free from pesticides and fertilizers could be produced through adoption of organic farming simultaneously, this bitter truth should be also accepted that organic agriculture has been confronted with many obstacles. Therefore, identifying the organic farming deterrent barriers and its facilitating factors from agricultural experts’ perspective is very important. This Descriptive - survey research study was conducted to achieve the above mentioned purposes. The population of the study consisted of 95 experts from Zanjan Jihad Agriculture Organization from which 80 persons were selected by random sampling method. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire. Its validity was verified by a group of academic experts. In order to measure the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach Alpha coefficient was calculated for the main scales of the questionnaire (attitude toward organic agriculture= 0.72, deterrent factors of adoption= 0.83 and facilitating factors of adaption= 0.85). Although the results revealed that agricultural experts’ attitude towards organic farming was quite favorable, from their viewpoint, organic farming was encountered by major obstacle such as lack of attention by society and environmental health, unawareness of organic farming needs and technology, no difference at the price, inaccessibility to required inputs, and the absence of export license. These obstacles explained 56.96% of total variance of organic agriculture adoption barriers in the form of economic-education and planning factors. The research results also revealed that some items such as accurate management, development of marketing, educated experts and professional advisers, insurance supports, training, funding, and implementing policies had the most important impact on the adoption of organic farming. These items were categorized into four factors namely social- economic, extension and educational, technical and managerial and explained 61.02% of total variation of organic agriculture adoption. Finally, some recommendations were developed based on the research findings.