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Organic farming is increasing in Finland, and organic farms have become larger than conventional farms, on average. As the structural change has been rapid, farmers need a broad range of new competencies to manage their farms, ranging from agronomic skills to advanced technology, labor management, and marketing skills. In this study, the characteristics of organic and conventional farms and farmers were assessed, with special focus on management practices and future development plans on organic farms. The study was based on telephone interviews of a sample of active farmers who applied for agricultural subsidies in 2014. The data consisted of 3045 farmers; 312 of them practiced organic farming and 2733 conventional farming. The data were analyzed using multivariable logistic regression. Having beef production as the main production line, having plans to develop farm production in the next 5 years, considering farm management as very important, and frequently experiencing mental strain because of farm management were significant predictors for being an organic farmer. Dairy production was less frequently organic compared to crop production. Nearly half (42%) of organic farmers planned to make changes in their farming, most commonly expanding their production. Thus, competence for managing the farm operation becomes more crucial, which increases the need for training and management consulting services. Organic farming may increase with both farm successions and new entrants joining the farming sector. Special attention should be paid to supporting these new entrants without farm-family background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing organic production is one of the strategic objectives of the Finnish agricultural policy. Despite the positive developments observed during the last decade, reaching the objectives set by the Finnish government remains challenging. The contributions of this study are twofold. Firstly, this study provides new empirical evidence on productive performance of organic crop farming in Finland and explains observed gap between average output of organic and conventional farms. Specifically, we use the most recent available farm-level data and analyze the performance of organic crop farms over the period 2010–2017. Secondly, to estimate the performance gap between the organic and conventional crop farms, we apply one-stage semi-nonparametric regression. This approach alleviates the endogeneity problem of the commonly used two-stage estimation approaches, providing robust estimates without restrictive functional form assumptions. Our results reveal a significant performance gap between organic and conventional farming. However, the difference between productive performance of organic and conventional crop farms has been decreasing over the years. Moreover, a positive trend is revealed in organic production at the end of the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]