Pathology of Organic Agriculture in Iran's Sanctioned Economy for Green Products (Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies)
Abstract
Through the ages, agricultural system has been changed variously and human has always been the most important factor in this change. In the recent century, due to growing population, human primary attitude, which is a sort of friendly one, is replaced with the one-side relationship that is against the nature. In this case, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, hormones products and etc., enter to the agricultural sector and through utilization of modified varieties, there has been great mutation in production of agricultural products to be a response to increasing demand of foods. But this enhancement is followed by environmental and health problems for producers and consumers. Iran is vulnerable to the arable land equipped for irrigation, food imports over total merchandise exports, and the cereal imports dependency ratio while being resilient per capita food production and food supply variability. Growing consumer awareness about environmental issues has resulted in increased attention toward the consumption of organic food. This has driven an increase in organic research. Most of these researches are conducted in developed countries and developing countries has a small contribution. This paper investigates the effects of organic knowledge, perception of consequences, subjective norms, price, green trust, perceived consumer effectiveness, availability, relative advantage and organic purchase intention on organic purchase behavior among Iranian consumers as a developing country consumer. Results showed strong support for the impact of price, consumer effectiveness and perception of consequences on intention to purchase organic food products. While organic knowledge, green trust, price, consumer effectiveness and intention were found to influence purchase behavior. This paper will discuss the implications of these results for agricultural practitioners and marketers.
