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The way in which farm managers' attitudes, personality, behavior, values, and sociodemographic characteristics influence farm business performance is, at best, only partially understood. The study reported here expands on this understanding by analyzing the attitudes and personal attributes of 80 dairy farmers in Great Britain in relation to the profitability over 3 yr of their farm businesses. Business goals, temperament, purchasing behavior, and having a growth mindset toward the business were found to be associated with profitability. A linear regression model consisting of 5 variables related to the above was presented that predicts 34% of the observed variation in profitability. Each of these variables were questions related to the participants' personal attitudes or beliefs. Other assessed variables, such as specific husbandry behaviors or practices, or management practices and sociodemographic characteristics, did not warrant inclusion in the final model. These results uniquely contribute to understanding how the attitudes, personality, behaviors, and attributes of dairy farmers are associated with, and thus likely to influence, the profitability of their farm businesses.

Most authors have referred to the likelihood of having an identified successor in the family as an influential factor affecting several family farm management decisions. Here, we investigate this relationship for a selection of such decisions: the timing of farmers’ retirement; the willingness of farmers to change their current mix of activities; their readiness to adopt new farm activities; and their attitude towards intensifying production. The categorical data analysed, mostly Likert scales, came from a postal survey carried out in 2001–2002 of a sample of 13,516 German, British and Portuguese farmers, with just over 4,600 valid responses. Statistical association between the variables was examined by computing the ?2 statistic and testing for the null hypothesis of no association between the various pairs of variables. The main conclusions are that the likelihood of having a successor was positively related to the planned length of active farmers’ lives, to farmers’ adoption of new activities, and to farmers’ willingness to intensify production in the future. The likelihood of having a successor was also found to be negatively related to the intention of leaving farm land idle. However, no empirical evidence was found of a statistically significant relationship between the likelihood of succession and farmers’ readiness to change the mix of their future farm activities., The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, Vol. 18 No. 2 (2011)

After 10 years of GM maize cultivation in Portugal, the area produced remains modest, at 6.3% of total maize production in 2015. This fact suggests that significant constraints to further expansion continue to exist. Through a survey of the structural and attitudinal characteristics of GM and conventional maize producers, this article explores constraints to adoption of GM crops in Portugal. The survey revealed a complex mix of barriers based around structural and attitudinal factors. For example, GM adopters managed larger farms than conventional, with double the area of maize grown. GM maize growers felt more constrained (in terms of factors depressing yields) by pests, especially corn borers and weeds than their non-GM counterparts. A number of non-structural barriers to GM uptake were also identified, such as perceived public opposition to GM cultivation and increased management burden associated with coexistence measures, through the requirement to make decisions in conjunction with neighbors. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion