"Socio-economic and policy studies" covers a very broad range of research. Consequently, one cannot judge the strengths and weaknesses of a particular research method independently from the particular topic being studied.
Therefore, we first developed a two-dimensional classification of socio-economic and policy studies in organic farming. The first dimension is the level of the study. In increasing order, these are:
The second dimension is the topics of interest. In no particular order, these are:
The Workshop participants classified their own research according to these categories. (In this exercise, we did not attempt to cover work by others). The participants' research has predominantly fallen into several clusters:
A third dimension that must also be taken into account is the goals of the study of which we identify four possibilities:
We then listed the methods that can be used in socio-economic and policy studies and rated the appropriateness of each method for studies with each of these possible goals. Time permitted us to do this for only two of the major combinations of level and topic of interest (given above).
For farm-level economic studies, possible methods are:
The following summarizes the judgement of the group concerning the value of each of these methods for farm-level economic studies: (0 = not valuable; 1 = somewhat valuable; 2 = highly valuable):
METHOD | |||||||
GOAL |
CS |
S |
PF |
LP |
PB |
FP |
EG |
Descriptive |
2 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
Comparative |
1 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
Improvement |
1 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Projections |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
For studies of markets at the regional or national level, case studies are appropriate but some additional methods become available.
For regional or national marketing studies, the Workshop's judgement was as follows:
METHOD | ||||||
GOAL |
CS |
PA |
ES |
EG |
LA |
FA |
Descriptive |
2 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
Comparative |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
Improvement |
2 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Projections |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
One important qualifier for these charts is that the ratings vary by country depending on where the country stands regarding previous research on organic farming and on the size of its organic farming sector. Consequently, these ratings would also change over time in a given country.