Agricultural sustainability: exploring smallholder organic tea farmers' adherence to sustainable agricultural practices

Globally, agriculture is experiencing sustainability challenges including excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic inputs, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, climate change, etc. In countries like China, farmers have experienced changes in the rainfall pattern and extreme heat and cold. Accordingly, agricultural sustainability policies support sustainable practices like integrated pest management, improved nutrient management, agroforestry systems, crop rotation, no tillage, conservation efforts, and the use of organic manure and fertilizer, as well as sustainable technologies, inputs, and innovations as a mitigation measure. However, there is little information available on farmers practices, and the concept of sustainable farming is dimly understood, resulting in divergent views among numerous stakeholders, particularly farmers, about what exactly defines sustainable agriculture. As a result, the necessity for sustainable agriculture is becoming a problem. The study therefore aims to measure smallholder farmers' adherence to sustainable agricultural practices and assess the factors that influence farmers' adherence to sustainable practices. Survey approach was adopted to collect data from 405 smallholder farmers using sustainable agricultural technologies to measure farmer's adherence to the practices. Using multivariate probit analysis, the study discovered that whereas gender had no significant impact on farmers' adherence, age had a substantial impact. Income had favourable correlation with the sustainable practices, but not significant with overall adherence. Remarkably, farmers' commitment to adhere was encouraged by their neighbours' activities, organic farming methods, and farmers who had engaged in organic farming. Farmers' adherence was affected by farmers' concern about facing penalties from market regulators or the government, but not for monitoring and regulation. Lastly, even though the smallholder farmers thought that implementing sustainable practices was essential to achieving sustainable agriculture, this did not alter their will to do so.