Impact of the farming management profile on farmers' perception of their own quality of life

Abstract

The quality of life of dairy producers is impacted by changes of the Common Agricultural Policy and an instability of milk price. The current research aims to study the impact of the farming management profile on farmers’ perception of their quality of life. A total of 1,369 farm accountings collected by the Walloon Breeding Association between 2014 and 2017 provided 17 variables about farming management. Using Principal Component Analysis and a Ward hierarchical clustering, two farming management profiles were created from which 87 Walloon dairy farms were selected, as extreme representatives of the profiles. Only 41 dairy farmers answered the survey containing 24 questions related to farmers’ characteristics, farm structure and management and 16 questions about farmers’ perceptions of their quality of life. Using a Multiple Component Analysis and a Ward hierarchical clustering, three farming management profiles were built from 34 survey modalities: one profile with a strong intensive management trend (N=10), another with an extensive trend (N=16) and a third one having more activities on farm than only milk production (N=15). Using a similar methodology, 3 profiles related to the quality of life were also created using 19 survey modalities: one profile corresponded to the satisfied farmers (N=16), another profile contained unsatisfied farmers (N=17) and the third one was composed of farmers with a quality of life perceived as average (N=8). Farms with more than 2 workers were the ones where the farmers were more satisfied with their quality of life (p-value < 0.1). The differences of farm income and profit by work unit were significant between groups of quality of life (p-values < 0.05): the “Satisfied” group earning less money than the “Unsatisfied” or the “Average quality of life” group. Although the result comparing the frequencies observed for each farming management profile with the ones obtained for the profiles related to the quality of life was not significant (p-value = 0.5), the “survey-intensive” group tended to be the group of farmers more satisfied with their quality of life. The “Survey-mixed” management profile was more located in the “Unsatisfied group”. This could be related to the amount of work, decisions and stresses added by the higher number of activities existing on farms belonging to the “Survey-mixed” group. In conclusion, the hypothesis that farming management profile impacts the quality of life of farmers could still be valid. However, the survey should be proposed to a higher number of farmers in order to valid that assumption.