Factors Affecting the Adoption of Environmental Management Systems by Crop and Livestock Farms in Canada

This study examines, both qualitative and quantitatively, the motivation for crop, livestock, and mixed (both crop and livestock) farms in Canada to behave environmentally responsibly by adopting Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in the farm and the impact of a number of human capital, financial, farm structure, and social characteristics of the farmer and/or the farm on this behavior. It uses the data from 16,053 farms that responded to the Farm Environmental Management Survey conducted by Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in 2001, which collects information on implementation of EMS in the areas manure, fertilizer, pesticide, water, wildlife, grazing, and nutrient management in the farm.The outcome of analysis show that mixed farms have the highest adoption rates, in general, across the eight EMSs considered in this study, while livestock-only farms have the lowest. The most common EMSs used by all farms are fertilizer and pesticide management plans with the whole farm environmental plan as the least likely to be adopted. The results based on a regression analysis suggest that “young” and “rich” farmers with a “large” land extent tend to adopt as many as possible EMS, but the gender of the farmer does not show a significant impact on this behaviour. The level of urbanization and government regulation also affects significantly the level of adoption of EMSs. The analysis, as a whole, points out that even in the absence of “mandatory” national level policies to regulate agricultural farms in Canada, farmers show a tendency to adopt as much as possible EMS “voluntarily”, because of their own interests in the farming environment and/or motives originating from the market where they operated with.