Factors Influencing Intention to Adopt Sustainable Agriculture Practices among Paddy Farmers in Kada, Malaysia

Abstract

A well-known fact is that indiscriminate use of chemical inputs in the production process can have negative effects on the environment, as well as increasing chronic and acute health problems for farmers who mishandle or not follow proper procedures in applying the chemicals. Sustainable agriculture is thus becoming an important concept in alerting the management about controversial agricultural practices. The objective of this study is to investigate the paddy farmer's intention to practices sustainable agriculture and to determine the significant factors that could be used as predictors in having intention to practice sustainable agriculture. Thus, in order to disseminate sustainable agriculture, it is absolutely necessary to comprehend the farmer's intention to apply sustainable farming practices based on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). A total of 61 paddy farmer household heads were interviewed for this study during the main season of 2013. The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of multiple regression analysis of 0.76 indicate that proportion of the total variation in paddy farmers intention to practice sustainable agriculture is explained by the following variables; farmers' attitude and perceived behavioral control towards sustainable agriculture, age, number of protection equipment's used, storage method of chemical input, awareness and knowledge of MyGAP/IPM are significant as influential determinants of farmers' intention to adopt sustainable agriculture at 5% level of significant.