Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Organic Farmers towards Participatory Guarantee System Certification in Laguna
Date
5-2024
Degree
Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Management
College
College of Economics and Management (CEM)
Adviser/Committee Chair
Eliza C. Aquino
Committee Member
Cherry Lou R. Nuñez, Melodee Marciana E. De Castro
Abstract
In 2010, Republic Act 10068 or also known as “Organic Agriculture Act of 2010” sought to promote and develop the growth of the organic agriculture industry in the Philippines. In its implementation, organic producers were required to have certification from 3rd party certifying bodies in order to market their produce as “organic” but this brought challenges to small-scale organic farmers since this certification process is costly and arduous. To address this, the law was amended in 2020 through Republic Act 11511 which introduced the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) to provide a cheaper certification alternative as well as to help capacitate small-scale farmers in organic production and marketing. In Laguna province, one of the pioneering PGS-Organic Certifying Bodies in the country was established in 2023 which paved the way for the beginning of PGS certification in the province. With relatively little literature looking into intrinsic factors affecting farmer decision regarding PGS certification, this study aims to determine what is known, believed, and practiced by organic farmers regarding PGS certification. To achieve this, the main objective of this study is to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes, and practices of organic farmers towards PGS certification in Laguna with the specific aim to: (1) Describe the socio-demographic characteristics of organic farmers in Laguna; (2) Assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of organic farmers towards PGS; (3) Analyze the relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics of organic farmers and their knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards PGS certification; (4) Evaluate the opportunities and challenges of PGS certification in Laguna; and (5) Formulate recommendations for the improvement of the Participatory Guarantee System in Laguna.
A total of 38 organic farmers from six municipalities in Laguna were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. The data collected for this study were qualitative information on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of organic farmers towards PGS. This was done through the administration of a survey-interviews in which the socio-demographic information of the organic farmers were gathered as well as their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding PGS. This data was analyzed using the Spearman Rank Correlation Test to determine if there is a significant relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics and KAP with supplementation of thematic analysis to provide deeper insight on their KAP.
Based on the survey, the majority of the organic farmers were aged between 31 and 40 which comprised 34.21% of the respondents. For educational attainment, more than half or 52.63% of the respondents were college graduates while for family size, they were mostly considered medium-size with 4 to 6 members living together in one household which comprised 50.00% of the respondents. With regards to organic farming experience, a significant proportion of respondents at 31.21% only have been involved in organic farming for about 1 to 5 years while for conventional farming experience, the majority of them at 42.11% have never been involved in such practice. In terms of farm size, most of the organic farms are considered micro-scale as the majority of them at 44.74% of the respondents have farm lands that are less than 1 hectare. For their monthly income, the majority of the respondents or 47.37% of them earn less than PHP 10,000.00 per month from their organic farm which is why almost half of them or 44.74% of the respondents have at least one other source of income apart from organic farming. It was also found that 52.63% of the respondents are members of organizations and associations related to agriculture. Almost half of the respondents were also recipients of material, financial, and technical assistance from government agencies and non-government organizations with 46.43% of them claiming to have received 3 to 4 items from those entities. The majority of respondents or 39.47% of them also reported that they participated in 3 to 4 different agricultural training sessions.
In addition, the levels of knowledge of organic farmers about PGS were found to be high with more than half or 57.89% of the respondents attaining a high score of 6 to 8 but with a mean of 4.37. For the levels of attitude, it can be inferred that they possess a favorable attitude towards PGS certification since a significant proportion of respondents at 89.47% garnered a high score of 41 to 60 and this is backed up by a high mean score of 47.37. From their level of practice, it can be said that they have a medium level of practice since 56.76% of the respondents acquired a score somewhere between 26 and 45 out of 70 but with a relatively high mean of 47.26. The thematic analysis revealed that knowledge on PGS is focused on its features, requirements, and objectives while for attitude, it highlighted the aspirations of organic farmers as to why they want to acquire PGS certification and their fears that hinder them from pursuing the certification which was reinforced by their beliefs that PGS certification is a complicated process and difficult to attain.
For the analysis of these data, Spearman Rank Correlation Test was utilized which yielded results on the relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics and KAP of the organic farmers regarding PGS certification. For knowledge, only educational attainment, other income sources, and agricultural training were the socio-demographic variables that were found to have significant positive relationship with knowledge. Knowledge-educational attainment and knowledge-agricultural training were the relationships with moderate correlation strength while knowledge-other income sources have weak correlation. With regards to attitude, only family size with weak positive correlation and agricultural training with moderate positive correlation have significant statistical relationship with attitude. Finally, practice has a significant positive relationship with educational attainment, agricultural training, monthly farm income, and other income sources with the first 2 variables having moderate correlation with practice while the other 2 variables only have weak correlation.
From these findings, it was concluded that recommendations and intervention proposals for local government units like FAES-OPAG and MAO should be focused on information dissemination to address knowledge gaps and subsidization programs to address the fears on certification costs while for the PGS-OCB in Laguna, their efforts should be geared towards reducing certification costs and making adjustments in their internal standards to address the apprehension of organic farmers that prevents them from fully adopting PGS certification.
Language
English
LC Subject
Organic farmers
Location
UPLB College of Economics and Management (CEM)
Call Number
LG 993 2024 M17 M35
Recommended Citation
Malabanan, Vincent H., "Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Organic Farmers towards Participatory Guarantee System Certification in Laguna" (2024). Undergraduate Theses. 11509.
https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/etd-undergrad/11509
Document Type
Thesis
Notes
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