lWral Sociology 62 (I), 1997, pp. 48-68Copyright © 1997 by the Rural Sociological Society

Images of Success: How Dlinois Farmers Define theSuccessful Farmer!

GelTY WalterDepartment ofHuman and Community Development,Uni1>ersity ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, lUinois 61801

ABSTRACT: Farmers' views of farming success help frame their responsesto information about farming, including alternative agriculture. A Q­analysis of 68 commercial farmers' subjective images of the successfulfarmer and the relative importance they accord different personal valuesand characteristics revealed four "model" images of the successful farmer.The Steward recognizes a moral responsibility to sustain land resources;the Manager succeeds largely by virtue of analytical skill; the Conserva­tive's main goal is long-term preservation of the farm business; and theAgrarian values the rural life style and community participation. Farmersholding the Steward image tended to be older and to farm fewer acres;those with the Manager image included a large proportion of less experi­enced farmers. Approximately 40 percent of the farmers' views of successdid not fit any of the four "model" images. Analysis of the findings sug­gests that images of success may be associated with life stage or genera­tional differences in farming goals and values.

Introduction

Public concern about agriculture's social and environmental con­sequences has heightened interest in the development of agricul­tural production systems that are successful in terms of societal(e.g., environmental quality and social justice) as well as individualfirm criteria. With this examination has come attention by rural so­ciologists to farmers' values and attitudes with respect to what Beusand Dunlap (1990) have presented as a conventional-alternativeagricultural paradigm continuum. Recent work in this area (Allenand Bernhardt 1995; Beus and Dunlap 1991, 1994a, 1994b) has ex­plored farmers' and others' adherence to different paradigmaticpositions and those positions' relationship with the adoption ofwhat are currently considered less conventional production prac­tices. These studies rest on the premise that farmers' decisions tojoin a sustainable agricultural group or to employ an alternativefarm practice are contingent on underlying systems of beliefs abouthow they ought to practice agriculture.

To explore these underlying belief systems in more detail, thestudy reported here examined 68 Illinois commercial farmers' sub­jective definitions of the successful farmer and of the personal val-

1 This research was supported in part by the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Sta­tion, Project 04-0304. The author thanks Suzanne Wilson and Dan Anderson forproject assistance.

Images of Success - Walter 49

ues and characteristics they think the successful farmer shouldhave. This study's key assumption is that the ways the farmers char­acterize their "ideal" successful farmer reveal the goals and valuesthey associate with farming success. These, in turn, are fundamen­tal parts of the belief systems from which they construct their atti­tudes about alternative and conventional agriculture. By examiningareas of convergence and difference among farmers' images of thesuccessful farmer, the research aims to suggest how different farm­ers may receive, interpret, and respond to alternative agriculture­related information, arguments, and appeals.

Sources of successful farmer imagery

In fundamental, romantic, agrarian mythology (Rohrer and Dou­glas 1969; Smith 1982), the successful farmer is hard-working, self­reliant, and religious, living and working in harmony with nature topreserve the land for future generations of farmers, that is, for thefamily and community. Agricultural industrialization has broughtinto ascendance a commercial variant of the romantic, agrarianmythology that transformed the fundamental version's virtues ofindependence, hard work, and self-reliance into individualism,maximum production, and technical efficiency and innovation(Goldschmidt 1982; Thompson 1986). In the commercial form, suc­cess flows from exploitation of natural processes, and the successfulfarmer is an efficient producer who subordinates other values tothe operation of the farm business.

Similarly, the competing agricultural paradigms outlined by Beusand Dunlap (1990), although framed in the broader terms of agri­culture as a social system, suggest some of the attributes possessedby individuals farming according to the paradigms' differing goals.The successful conventional farmer, for example, must be efficient,competitive, scientific, oriented toward short-term profitability, andable to impose on nature a more or less industrialized productionsystem. In contrast, the alternative paradigm suggests that the suc­cessful farmer works with nature and his community, blends craftand intuition with science, manages resources for long-term prof­itability, and values nature for its own sake.

However, individual farmers' definitions of farming success arenecessarily variable and subjective, governed by personal goals forfarm, farmer, and family, and likewise by farm, farmer, and familyresources and capabilities. These, in turn, are situated within re­gional, cultural, and historical contexts that impose their own exi­gencies on the goals farmers must pursue to achieve success. Ben­nett (1982) illustrates how changing goals accompanied differentstages in the life cycles of the farm family and the farm enterprisein Saskatchewan prairie communities in the first two-thirds of thiscentury. Farmers in the early stages of establishing and developing

50 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

their farms strove to improve their technical efficiency and accu­mulate capital to support their growing families. Later, growth as agoal was superseded by more intensive development and refine­ment of farming methods so that, at retirement, the farmer couldassure security for himself and his spouse while establishing a sonor apprentice as head of the enterprise. While in the long run, thesuccessful farmer was one who could retire comfortably after pass­ing the farm to the next generation, success in each precedingstage was measured very differently.

Farming success can also be measured against external standards,such as neighbors or relatives, or against representations of farmersand farming success in such cultural products as literature, cinemaand journalism. Salamon (1992) documents how ethnic culturalnorms shape Midwestern family and community definitions of thesuccessful farmer, so that "entrepreneurs" define success in termsof wealth and profit while "yeomen" strive for continuity of owner­ship. Further, Barlett (1993) illustrates how farm spouses' back­grounds influence whether a family embraces primarily "agrarian"or "industrial" notions of success. Other studies suggest that successfor many farmers reflects agrarianism's mixture of competingideals, leading some to forego maximum economic rewards for thesake of a farm lifestyle that features such non-economic values asbeing one's own boss, making friends, and doing good work (Bar­lett 1986; Coughenour and Swanson 1988; Kliebenstein et aI. 1980).

American farm magazines offer their own definition of successfulfarming in "success stories" that feature real farmers as models ofgood farm management and, in some cases, ideal farm living. To­gether, these stories offer readers a definition of the requisites offarming success-the array of attributes and attitudes that charac­terize the successful farmer-and a criterion against which readersmay judge the appropriateness of their own farming goals andmethods (Walter 1995). Analyses of these stories (Walter 1995,1996) show these farmers associate success with predominantlycommercial values and communicate relatively little about alterna­tive practices or the values underlying the alternative agriculturalparadigm.

Methods

This study uses Q-methodology to shed light on the ways Illinoisfarmers think about farming success and the relative importancethey accord values and farmer attributes consistent with the al­ternative and conventional agricultural paradigms. The intent inQ-methodology is to enable study participants, known collectivelyas a P-sample, to model their own attitudes toward the topic of in­terest; this methodology then examines areas of convergenceamong those models to reveal categories of thinking that exist

Images of Success - Walter 51

among P-sample members (Brown 1980; Rosenbleuth and Wiener1945). In this study, the method begins with a set of statements, theQ-sample, of attributes that might be used to describe a successfulfarmer. By manually sorting the statements according to how closeeach is to his own idea of a successful farmer, each study partici­pant creates his own subjective definition of farming success.Q-factor analysis then identifies major patterns of sentimentsamong these sorts that represent more or less distinct definitions ofsuccess. Finally, the analysis is interpreted in terms of salient char­acteristics and attitudes of members of each Q-factor group to sug­gest some of the origins and implications of different definitions ofsuccess.

The Q-method's primary advantage in this study is that it enablesfarmers to model their own constructions of the successful farmerwithout the constraints associated with constructed scales (Brown1980; McKeown and Thomas 1988). Farmers provide their own de­finitions and sort themselves into categories, rather than being as­signed to categories by virtue of their answers to measures of exter­nally derived constructs. Q-methodology also renders moot thequestion of whether the farmers' constructions are valid represen­tations of their definitions of the successful farmer (Brown 1980;McKeown and Thomas 1988; Stephenson 1973). Each farmer's con­struction is precisely and genuinely what the analysis takes it to be:a description, from within the boundaries of the Q-sample, ofwhich attributes that farmer believes are more and less importantin characterizing the successful farmer.

Selecting the P-sample

In Q-methodology, the critical property of the P-sample is not itsrepresentativeness of some larger population, but rather its re­presentation of relevant differences in that population. Hence,P-sample selection requires neither random sampling nor largenumbers of cases. Q-factor analysis groups cases according to theirarrangement of the Q-sample statements, so the validity of the atti­tudes or sentiments exhibited by a Q-factor group does not dependon the size of the group (Brown 1980; McKeown and Thomas1988). And because Q-factor analysis describes only the significantlydifferent sentiments held by P-sample members, random samplingof the universe of relevant potential participants is unnecessary.Q-analysis, therefore, cannot establish the relative distribution ofdifferent views in the larger population, nor can it be assumeda priori to exhaust the range of attitudes held by any populationother than the P-sample itself. However, including participants withsalient characteristics likely to be associated with different viewsenhances the chance that a Q-analysis will cover a more nearlyexhaustive range of sentiments.

52 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

Beginning from the premise that farming goals influence afarmer's view of farming success, and that these goals, in turn, mayvary according to adherence to different agricultural paradigms,enterprise mix, and life stage, the P-sample selection incorporatedfarmers of differing ages, orientations to alternative agriculture,and topographic/climatic regions (a reasonable proxy for enter­prise mix in the agricultural areas studied). Farmers likely to havealternative orientations or farming systems were contacted at meet­ings of on-farm research project cooperators. Meetings in four dif­ferent topographic/climatic regions of the state yielded 33 Q-sortsby farmers with varying ages and enterprise mixes; 32 of these wereby members of regional sustainable agriculture organizations.Farmers likely to have more conventional orientations were con­tacted at Farm Bureau meetings in two counties similar in topogra­phy to one of the alternative farmer sites. Three meetings, one at­tended by self-identified "young farmers," yielded 35 Q-sorts byfarmers running primarily cash-grain enterprises.

Constructing the Q-sample

Because the study is part of research on the communication of ide­ology in farm magazine narratives of the successful farmer, theQ-sample was drawn from a universe of descriptions of farmers fea­tured in farm magazine success stories. Two coders canvassed 236success stories published in SuccessfulFarming, Farm fournal, and Illi­nois Prairie Farmer from 1984 through 1991 to identify 614 state­ments that suggested the reason for or character of a featuredfarmer's success. They and a third coder independently assignedeach statement to one of 12 categories corresponding to attributesprevalent in agrarian descriptions of the successful farmer or sug­gested by Beus and Dunlap's (1990) conventional and alternativeagricultural paradigms. After merging the three lists and deletingredundant or ambiguous statements, they and two other coders in­dependently reassigned each of 311 remaining statements to the 12categories (plus a residual category).

The two original coders then created a 65-item Q-sample by se­lecting five items from each category that most clearly and eco­nomicallyexpressed (or opposed) each category's salient themes.Each statement was taken verbatim from farm magazine content,except where statements were edited to be non-gender specific. Fol­lowing Q-sorts by nine pre-testers, the statements were reduced to52 to shorten sorting time and increase thematic cohesivenesswithin categories. After five more pre-tests, the 52 statements wereprinted on plastic cards, and the condition of instruction, whichread "Sort the statements according to how close they are to youridea of a successful farmer," was affixed to a sorting board that in-

ImagesofSuccess - Walter 53

dicated the number of items to be placed into each of 11 responsecategories of the forced-choice Q-sort.2 Table 1 lists the 52 state­ments in the Q-sample by category.

Administeringthe Q-sort and questionnaire

All Q-sorts were completed during February, March, and April of1995. Each member of the P-sample was given a sorting board anda randomly stacked deck of cards bearing the Q-sample statements.The origin of the statements was explained, and the condition ofinstruction was read and paraphrased where necessary. Participantscompleted the sorts in 20 to 40 minutes; the pattern of each sortwas recorded on a coding form. Post-sort debriefing focused on val­ues and other criteria used in the sort, reactions to the sortingprocess, and thoughts about farming and farming success engen­dered by the statements in the sort.

Participants also completed a self-administered questionnairethat asked their age, number of years as primary farm decisionmaker, and amount of off-farm work during 1994. They reportedtheir farm scale and enterprise mix by recording numbers of acresin 12 crop categories and numbers of livestock in 12 livestock cate­gories. They reported their level of formal education in three cate­gories: high school diploma only, some college or technical schooltraining, and baccalaureate degree. They reported farm magazineuse by noting which of 10 general, specialized, and alternative farmmagazines they had regularly received or read during the past twoyears. Strength of agrarian sentiment was assessed using items usedby Beus and Dunlap (1994a) in their examination of agrarianism'scorrespondence with adherence to agricultural paradigms." Data

2 Q-methodology typically forces participants to arrange statements in an approx­imately normal distribution. For example, participants were allowed to place onlythree statements each in whole-number response categories +5 ("nearest to [or mostlike] your idea of a successful farmer") and -5 ("farthest [or most unlike]"). From+5 to -5, the number of statements allowed per category was 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 7, 5, 4,3, and 3.

3 Items include: Government should have a policy to ensure that family farms sur­vive. Farmers should raise all of the crops and livestock possible as long as there arehungry people. Agriculture is the most basic occupation in our society, and almostall other occupations depend on it. Family farms should be supported even if itmeans higher food prices. A depression in agriculture is likely to cause a depressionin the entire country. Farming should be an occupation where farmers can maketheir economic decisions independently. Farmers ought to appreciate farming as agood life, and be less concerned about their cash income. Farmers should competein a free market without government support. Farming involves understanding andworking with nature; therefore, it is a much more satisfying occupation than others.The family farm must be preserved because it is a vital part of our heritage.

Additional items (scores reversed in computing the agrarianism scale score) in­clude: Farming should be valued as a business, not as a way of life. Having fewerfarmers is a positive, not a negative, symbol of agricultural progress.

54 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, spring 1997

from the coding forms and questionnaire were analyzed with SPSSjPC+ v.5.0.

The 68 farmers in the P-sample ranged in age from 17 to 84, witha median age of 44, and they had run their farms for periods rang­ing from 1 to 50 years. All grew crops in 1994, primarily corn andsoybeans, but also wheat, forages, and horticultural crops. Totalcropland acreage ranged from 175 acres to 3,228 acres, with a me­dian of 525 acres. Fewer than half (36.7 percent) raised livestock.Slightly more than half (52.2 percent) hold baccalaureate degrees,and another 30.4 percent reported some college or technicalschool training. About half (48.5 percent) were full-time farmers in1994, and about one in six (16.2 percent) worked at a year-round,full-time off-farm job. Nearly half (48.5 percent) are members of al­ternative agriculture organizations. Almost two-thirds (64.7 per­cent) farmed in the cash-grain area of eastern Illinois, 25 percentfarmed in mixed agriculture regions of western and southwest Illi­nois, and 10.3 percent farmed in the dairy and cash-grain area ofnorthern Illinois.

Q1actor analysis

Just as R-factor analysis requires that cases outnumber variables, Q­factor analysis requires there be more Q-sample statements thansorts. The number of sorts to be factored was therefore reduced to51 by: 1) separately factoring groups of 34 sorts with low, high,even, and odd case- identification numbers; 2) analyzing intercor­relations within groups of sorts that loaded similarly in two or moreof these four analyses; 3) removing sorts that produced the small­est reduction in a group's Cronbach's alpha and that, therefore,could be represented by a "proxy" sort still in the group. Each ofthe 27 cases thus removed from the Q-factor analysis had an inter­item correlation with its proxy sort exceeding 0.73.

The remaining 51 sorts, factored using principal-componentsanalysis and varimax rotation, yielded 12 factors with eigenvaluesgreater than 1.0 that together explained 77.4 percent of the vari­ance. Most of these were uninterpretable, containing one or nopurely and strongly loaded sort. A forced four-factor solution, ex­plaining 55 percent of total variance, produced a more clearly in­terpretable reduction of the data, with 19, 12, 11, and nine sortsloading on the respective factors.

Q-sorts included in the Q-factor analysis which loaded purely ona single factor were assigned to one of four "factor groups." Sortsnot included in the analysis were restored to the data set by assign­ing each to the same factor group as its proxy sort. This assignmentresulted in factor groups containing 14, 12, 7, and 8 sorts, respec­tively. The remaining 27 sorts did not load purely on any of thefour factors.

Images ofSuccess - Walter 55

A "model Q-sort" was then constructed for each factor from theweighted averages of scores assigned each statement by members ofeach factor group (Brown 1980). Model Q-sort scores for each fac­tor are reported in Table 1. Each model Q-sort represents a differ­ent image of the successful farmer, or a perspective on farming suc­cess, as defined by the participants' sorting of the 52 magazinesuccess-story statements. The character of each image or perspec-,tive is most clearly reflected by the statements with the most ex­treme scores (±5 or ±4) in its model sorting pattern. Statementswith less extreme scores (±3, ±2, or ±1) reflect attributes less in­tensely associated with a perspective's image (or antithesis) of thesuccessful farmer. Statements scored 0, equally distant from thosethat are "most like" and "most unlike" the successful farmer, repre­sent attributes that "do not matter" (Stephenson 1974:10) in agiven perspective's definition of the successful farmer.

Fin.fIiIIgB: image. of the 8ueceuful farmer

The four images or definitions of the successful farmer all valuesuch traditionally agrarian attributes as stewardship, concern forfamily and, to a lesser extent, community involvement. They alsoconsider analytical skill and belief in farming as a business to be im­portant successful-farmer characteristics while tending to valuemaximum productivity and efficiency much less. The main differ­ences among the images lie in the relative importance they accordthe attributes they value most positively-in particular, stewardship,analytical skill, and family and community involvement.

Successful farmer as Steward

Care for land and environment figure most prominently in this im­age of success. The 14 farmers in this factor group gave greatestweight (+5 scores) to the following attributes:

25. Sees himself as an intricate link in nature and tries tobehave in a way that doesn't harm it.

26. Has not only high production but also all-around wiseuse of the land and soil conservation.

38. Is interested in soil conservation because he believesfarmers have a moral commitment to save soil for thenext generation.

Statements 25 and 38 describe the Steward's concern for stew­ardship and land care motivated by moral considerations as well asby economic interest. The Steward sees land care as a responsibilitythat comes with membership in the natural system, and he grantsposterity a moral claim that requires he be a steward of the soil.However, he is also a businessman, and statements with +4 scoreselaborate his approach to the commercial side of farming:

Tab

le1.

Q-s

ort

stat

emen

tsby

con

cep

tual

cate

gory

,w

ith

mo

del

Q-s

ort

scor

esfo

rfo

ur

dif

fere

nt

pers

pect

ives

of

the

succ

essf

ulfa

rmer

!

Per

spec

tive

Ste

war

dM

anag

erC

onse

rvat

ive

Ag

rari

an

+4

+5

+2

+2

-5-3

-3-1

-5-2

-2-4

-4-4

-4-I

-4-1

-1-1

-10

+1

0-I

0+

10

-3+

10

-3

+4

+2

+2

+1

-2+

1-1

-2+

4+

2+

2+

4-2

-4-3

-2

Cat

ego

ry/

stat

emen

ts

Pro

du

ctiv

e11

.D

oes

n't

have

an

ewtr

acto

r,p

lan

ter,

or

pic

ku

p.

Bu

th

asp

rod

uct

ion

figu

res

and

man

agem

ent

nu

mb

ers

that

wo

uld

imp

ress

the

mo

stas

tute

bank

er.

14.R

ates

gro

wth

inco

rnyi

elds

ashi

sm

ost

sign

ific

ant

farm

ing

acco

mp

lish

men

t.17

.Wo

nth

est

ate

corn

yiel

dco

nte

sttw

oye

ars

ina

row

,an

dth

en

atio

nal

con

test

two

year

saf

ter

that

.40

.A

ims

for

hig

hp

rod

uct

ion

rath

erth

anle

ast-

cost

inp

uts

.

Inno

vati

ve12

.Was

amo

ng

the

firs

tin

the

area

toin

vest

inco

mp

ute

rize

dp

rod

uct

ion

tech

no

log

y.

13.

Isq

uic

kto

try

and

ado

pt

new

farm

ing

idea

s.19

.Is

anea

rly

ado

pte

ro

fte

chn

olo

gy

.39

.B

elie

ves

that

bio

tech

no

log

y-e

ven

inits

infa

nt

stag

es-

ho

lds

eno

rmo

us

pro

mis

efo

rh

iman

dhi

sfa

rm.

Bus

ines

s-or

ient

ed33

.Bel

ieve

sth

atd

oin

gre

sear

chis

just

part

of

bei

ng

ab

usi

ness

man

-an

ysu

cces

sful

busi

ness

has

ad

epar

tmen

td

evo

ted

tore

sear

ch.

49.

Lo

ok

sat

farm

ing

asm

anag

emen

tby

obje

ctiv

e.55

.Bel

ieve

sfa

rmin

gis

aw

ayo

flif

eb

ut

also

afa

mil

ybu

sine

ss.

56.If

farm

ing

isn

'tpr

ofit

able

,w

illse

llo

ut.

Ana

lyti

cal

23.

His

farm

ing

prac

tice

sin

clu

de

17ye

ars

of

reco

rdk

eep

ing

on

each

fiel

d.C

ante

llth

eco

sto

fp

rod

uct

ion

inea

chfi

eld

and

uses

the

info

rmat

ion

tom

ake

cro

pp

ing

deci

sion

s.28

.A

ppli

espr

acti

cal,

do

wn

toea

rth

kn

ow

led

ge

on

his

farm

.+

2+

2+

4 o+

4+

1-1 +

5

\It

01 ~ ~ .... ~ 5· ~ ~ r- .~ ~ r- ~ ;I.

~ .... ~ ~

Tab

le1.

(co

nti

nu

ed)

Per

spec

tive

Cat

egor

y/st

atem

ent/

Ste

war

dM

anag

erC

onse

rvat

ive

Agr

aria

n

37.

Fig

ures

his

pro

du

ctio

nco

sts,

keep

sa

clos

ew

atch

onpr

ice

mov

emen

t,ta

lks

with

mer

chan

disi

ngpr

ofes

sion

als,

subs

crib

esto

two

mar

ket

advi

sory

lett

ers,

do

esso

me

char

ting

,an

dse

tsu

pa

tent

ativ

em

ark

etin

gpl

an.

+1

+5

+3

-250

.His

hea

rtis

inth

efa

rmin

gbu

sine

ss,

bu

td

oes

n't

mak

ede

cisi

ons

from

the

hea

rt-u

ses

his

hea

dfo

rth

at.

0+

30

+3

Eff

icie

nt69

.O

per

ates

very

effi

cien

tly

ona

min

imu

mam

ou

nt

of

mac

hine

ry.

+1

+3

0+

171

.Eff

icie

ncy

isw

hat

con

cern

sh

imm

ost.

-1+

2+

10

73.R

uns

long

ho

urs

toco

ver

alo

to

fac

res

with

each

mac

hine

.-3

-1-3

-174

.Has

trem

end

ou

sla

bo

r-ef

fici

ency

-on

lyo

ne

per

son

wor

ksin

the

50o-

sow

nurs

ery.

-3+

1-5

-4

A&

gres

sive

51

.Ju

mp

edfr

om30

dai

ryco

ws

to30

0in

the

past

16m

onth

s.-4

-2-3

-552

.Sla

shed

cost

sby

aggr

essi

vely

rene

goti

atin

gla

nd

cont

ract

san

dre

nt;

op

erat

es

~m

ostly

on

cash

,se

eks

bids

onbi

gbu

ys,

and

barg

ains

toug

h.-3

0+

20

53.

Ow

ns90

0ac

res,

ren

tsan

oth

er30

0,an

dcu

stom

farm

sye

tan

oth

er25

0.-1

0-1

-2i

66.

Man

agem

ent

and

mar

ket

ing

hel

ped

him

turn

80ac

res

into

on

eo

fth

ela

rges

tfa

mil

y-ow

ned

farm

sin

the

coun

ty.

-2+

1+

3+

1~

Ste

war

d

r25

.See

shi

mse

lfas

anin

tric

ate

link

inn

atu

re,

and

trie

sto

beha

vein

aw

ayth

atd

oes

n't

har

mit.

+5

-1+

3+

126

.Has

no

ton

lyh

igh

pro

du

ctio

nb

ut

also

all-

arou

ndw

ise

use

of

the

lan

dan

dI

soil

cons

erva

tion

.+

5+

5+

50

~31

.Bel

ieve

sth

atif

his

farm

gets

any

larg

erh

e'll

lose

pers

onal

con

tact

with

the

gro

un

d.

+2

-5-1

-1~

38.I

sin

tere

sted

inso

ilco

nser

vati

onbe

caus

eh

ebe

liev

esfa

rmer

sha

vea

mo

ral

com

mit

men

tto

save

soil

for

the

nex

tg

ener

atio

n.

+5

+3

+4

+2

"" "

Lif

esty

le-o

rien

ted

15.B

elie

ves

that

pro

fit'

sn

ot

all

of

it.W

ants

tom

ake

ad

ecen

tliv

ing,

bu

tw

ants

toen

joy

it.

+3

+3

+2

-318

.Cu

tb

ack

the

size

of

his

pro

fita

ble

op

erat

ion

tocu

tb

ack

on

stre

ss.

+1

-3+

10

21.

Dec

ided

no

tto

exp

and

his

farm

ente

rpri

seb

ecau

seit

wo

uld

swam

phi

sti

me

and

end

ang

erhi

sh

ealt

h.

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60 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

11. Doesn't have a new tractor, planter, or pickup. But hasproduction figures and management numbers thatwould impress the most astute banker.

33. Believes that doing research is just part of being a busi­nessman-any successful business has a department de­voted to research.

55. Believes farming is a way of life but also a family busi­ness.

Statements with strongly negative (-5 or -4) factor scores em­phasize this perspective's belief that success comes more from dili­gent stewardship than from maximum production and aggressivegrowth. High production, at least for its own sake, does not makethe Steward successful, nor does rapid expansion enhance hischances for success:

14. Rates growth in corn yields as his most significant farm­ing accomplishment.

17. Won the state corn yield contest two years in a row, andthe national contest two years after that.

29. Is a hero with the farm media; they write about him andfilm him often.

40. Aims for high production rather than least-cost inputs.12. Was among the first in the area to invest in computer­

ized production technology.51. Jumped from 30 dairy cows to 300 in the past 16

months.

Less strongly definitive statements in this model Q-sort nonethe­less add mildly agrarian undertones to the image of the successfulfarmer as Steward. Items scored +3 or +2 credit him with an unhar­ried life style, good standing in his community, and devotion tofamily. Those with modestly negative scores (-3 or -2) suggest thatefficiency, growth, and putting business ahead of other concernsare not his main goals.

Successfulfarmer as Manager

The 12 farmers holding this perspective define the successfulfarmer most clearly in terms of his analytical capabilities. Theircore definition is found in the following statements:

11. Doesn't have a new tractor, planter, or pickup. But hasproduction figures and management numbers thatwould impress the most astute banker.

37. Figures his production costs, keeps a close watch onprice movement, talks with merchandising profession­als, subscribes to two market advisory letters, does somecharting, and sets up a tentative marketing plan.

Images of Success - Walter 61

26. Has not only high production but also all-around wiseuse of the land and soil conservation.

23. His farming practices include 17 years of recordkeepingon each field. Can tell the cost of production in eachfield and uses the information to make cropping deci­sions.

27. Relies mainly on hard work and sound judgment ratherthan big, fancy machinery.

67. He and his wife have a program that will keep theirfamily farm intact for a lifetime.

The Manager's attention to farm records produces impressiveprofits, and his judgment contributes more to his success than dothe size and newness of his machinery. Statements 26 and 67 sug­gest he also prizes stewardship and family; when these statementsare read in context with the other four, however, soil conservationand preserving the family farm appear to be more the results ofsound management than goals in themselves.

Statements with strongly negative scores reinforce the image of afarmer whose success derives from astute management rather thanfrom technology or all-out production:

31. Believes that if his farm gets any larger he'll lose per­sonal contact with the ground.

65. Believes it's important to own every piece of equipmenton the place.

29. Is a hero with the farm media; they write about him andfilm him often.

17. Won the state corn yield contest two years in a row, andthe national contest two years after that.

56. If farming isn't profitable, will sell out.64. Wants to make decisions about how he farms before

somebody else makes them for him.

The inclusion of statement 31 here may suggest that the Managerdoes not need intimate knowledge of his farm; more probably, itsays he can successfully manage a farm of any size. Read in a nega­tive context, statement 65 reasserts the Manager's lack of concernwith having the latest machinery; and coupled with statement 64, italso suggests that he does not consider constraints on decision mak­ing a barrier to success if they do not limit his ability to make themost of the resources he does control. Statement 56 is problematic,suggesting as it does that the Manager will continue farming, eventhough his farm is unprofitable. This statement's strongly negativerank may represent a nod toward agrarian fundamentalism; alter­natively, it may indicate a rejection of the idea that a successfulfarmer would be unprofitable.

62 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

Like the Steward, the Manager does not place a high value ongrowth or production for its own sake. Similarly, technological in­novation and financial conservatism are largely neutral concerns.The Manager's image largely lacks romantic agrarian undertones;efficiency and business orientation tend to be more important thanlifestyle.

Successful farmer as Conseroative

The third factor group combines aspects of stewardship, financialconservatism, and concern for family to construct an image of asuccessful farmer committed to keeping his farm a family enter­prise. The farmers in this group gave +5 or +4 rankings to the fol­lowing:

26. Has not only high production but also all-around wiseuse of the land and soil conservation.

47. Instead of setting his sights on expansion, his goal is topayoff operating debts as quickly as possible.

60. Is a farmer who balances family obligations above allelse.

23. His farming practices include 17 years of recordkeepingon each field. Can tell the cost of production in eachfield and uses the information to make cropping deci­sions.

38. Is interested in soil conservation because he believesfarmers have a moral commitment to save soil for thenext generation.

67. He and his wife have a program that will keep theirfamily farm intact for a lifetime.

Statement 38 describes the Conservative's interest in future gen­erations and, when coupled with statement 67, shows that he wantshis farm to remain economically viable for his children. Where, forthe Manager, statement 23 indicates careful attention to detail, forthe Conservative, it expresses years-long familiarity with his landand farming operation.

This perspective's strongly negatively loaded statements under­score the importance of financial conservatism in its image of thesuccessful farmer:

29. Is a hero with the farm media; they write about him andfilm him often.

65. Believes it's important to own every piece of equipmenton the place.

74. Has tremendous labor-efficiency-only one person worksin the 50o-sow nursery.

40. Aims for high production rather than least-eost inputs.

Images of Success - Walter 63

30. To improve cash flow, took a part-time job off the farm.75. Thinks it's OK to rent for a while, but best not to rent

for a lifetime.

The Conservative controls costs, at the expense of productionand labor efficiency if necessary. Statements 65 and 75 extend thisto land and equipment, suggesting that the successful farmer willsacrifice independence to avoid debt.

This perspective's less extremely valued statements suggest thatcommunity involvement, attention to farm records, and enjoymentof farming also contribute to and characterize the Conservative'ssuccess. By contrast, innovativeness, efficiency, and some aspects offinancial conservatism are relatively irrelevant to his success.

Successfid farmer as Agrarian

The fourth successful-farmer image gives greatest prominence tothe following statements:

22. Enjoys watching the crops grow, seeing differentscenery each day, and having the freedom to make de­cisions.

28. Applies practical, down to earth knowledge on his farm.60. Is a farmer who balances family obligations above all

else.44. Both he and his wife put in long hours on the farm, as

well as volunteering for a slew of committees and officeswith church, community, and farm organizations.

50. His heart is in the farming business, but doesn't makedecisions from the heart-he uses his head for that.

67. He and his wife have a program that will keep theirfamily farm intact for a lifetime.

The Agrarian shares several attributes with the Conservative, buthis success comes from hard work, practical knowledge, and com­munity involvement. The successful Agrarian finds intrinsic value infarming as a way of life, but he recognizes it is a business as well.However, the eight farmers whose Q-sorts define this perspectivevalue shrewd management significantly less than those with otherviews do.

This image's strongly negative statements help more clearly todefine its agrarian orientation:

42. Played a key role in his county's effort to set up a ruralwater distribution system.

29. Is a hero with the farm media; they write about him andfilm him often.

51.Jumped from 30 dairy cows to 300 in the past 16months.

64 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

17. Won the state corn yield contest two years in a row, andthe national contest two years after that.

30. To improve cash flow, took a part time job off the farm.74. Has tremendous labor-efficiency-only one person works

in the 50o-sow nursery.

Statements 51 and 74 both suggest that the Agrarian sees largescale as a negative indicator of farming success. The other nega­tively scored statements suggest he has a distaste for things thattake time or attention away from enjoying farm and family and,perhaps, for trying to be different or "better" than others in thecommunity. Statements with more mildly negative scores reiteratethe Agrarian's reservations about aggressive growth and produc­tion, while those with mildly and moderately positive scores invokesuch traditional values as community, independence, and financialconservatism.

Characteristics offarmers wah different perspectives

These four images of the successful farmer cannot be considered tobe the only ways farmers think about farming success. Yet, althoughnone of these images necessarily completely describes any individ­ual's definition of the successful farmer, together they point out ba­sic differences among the participating farmers' ideas of what itmeans to be successful. Examining the characteristics of the farm­ers in each factor group can suggest reasons they hold differentviews of success, and such an examination may also indicatewhether the four-way classification of images can be useful in antic­ipating how other farmers might define success and respond torepresentations of farmers, farming, and success in farm maga­zines, advertising, and educational campaigns.

Table 2 summarizes the characteristics of participants holdingeach of the four images of success. Analyses of variance in thegroups' mean scores suggest that differences in age and farming ex­perience, membership in alternative farm organizations, interest inalternative farm magazines, farm scale, off-farm employment, andstrength of agrarian sentiment exist among farmers holding differ­ent perspectives. Moreover, these analyses showed no meaningfuldifferences in the groups' levels of education, number of farmingenterprises, or crop/livestock mix. A more detailed examination ofthe distribution of the characteristics within each group revealsmore about how those holding the various perspectives differ.

A salient feature of the age distributions is the comparativelylarge proportion (71.4 percent) of farmers defining success as stew­ardship who are older than 40. By contrast, more than 60 percentof the farmers offering Manager and Agrarian images are youngerthan 40, and all but one farmer in either group are younger than

Images of Success - Walter 65

Table 2. Personal, farm, and attitudinal characteristics of participantsholding different perspectives of farming success

Perspective

Steward Manager Conservative Agrarian

Number of participants 14 12 7 8

Age~40 (%) 28.6 66.7 42.9 62.541-60 (%) 50.0 25.0 28.6 25.0~61 (%) 21.4 8.3 28.6 12.5

Median 52 37 47 38Mean so.o- 37.3 46.1 b 39.5

Years as operator:::;10 (%) 14.3 41.7 28.6 37.511-30 (%) 42.9 50.0 42.9 50.0~31 (%) 42.9 8.3 28.6 12.5

Median 25 14 18 17Mean 25.8 13.3' 23.0 18.9

Alternative agriculture activityRegional organization (%) 71.3' 25.0 57.2b 25.0Alternative magazine (%) 46.2 0.0' 42.9 12.5b

Cropland acres~400 (%) 35.7 0.0 28.6 0.0401-800 (%) 64.3 66.7 42.9 67.5~800 (%) 0.0 33.3 28.6 37.5

Median 521 710 540 701Mean 488 999 654 1076'

Off-farm employmentNone (%) 53.9 58.3 57.1 50.0Full-time, 12 month (%) 15.4 8.3' 42.9b O.Oc

Agrarianism (mean) I 3.8' 3.3b 3.7' 3.5

I Constructed from 12 Likert-type scale items, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 =strongly agree.

a.b.c Groups with the same superscripts are significantly different from groups with-out superscripts, or with different superscripts, p < .05.

60. The ages of those in the Conservative factor group are moreevenly distributed: younger, as a group, than those with the Stewardimage, older than those with other views. Group differences inyears of farming experience predictably follow a roughly similarpattern.

Much smaller proportions of the farmers holding the Manager(25.0 percent) and Agrarian (25.0 percent) images are members ofalternative agriculture organizations. Also, much smaller propor­tions (0.0 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively) of these groupssubscribe to either of the two alternative farm magazines listed onthe study questionnaire.

The farmers holding an image of the successful farmer as Stew­ard tend to farm fewer acres, with the largest in the group being

66 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

760 acres. On the other hand, the smallest farm in both the Man­ager and Agrarian factor groups has 500 acres of cropland, and av­erage sizes are considerably larger. Again, the Conservative groupshows a flatter distribution, but a much larger proportion (42.9percent) of members have full-time jobs off the farm.

Farmers viewing success as stewardship scored, as a group, high­est in terms of support for agrarianism. Those defining success asconservatism or agrarianism scored slightly lower, while farmers inthe Manager factor group showed the weakest agrarian sentiments.On average, however, farmers in all groups showed general supportfor the more fundamental or romantic aspects of agrarian ideology.

Discussion

Success in any endeavor with farming's interwoven economic, en­vironmental, social, and cultural goals and values is necessarilycomplex, personal, and variable, and therefore resists simple cate­gorization. Reducing such a phenomenon to a short list of charac­teristics summarized in 52 statements guarantees the resultinganalysis will oversimplify both the similarities and the differencesamong the definitions offered by 68 study participants. On theother hand, the four "model" perspectives described in this analysisrepresent images of the successful farmer held in common by sig­nificant portions of those participants.

This study only begins to suggest sources of, or other influenceson, farmers' views of farming success. Age differences (and closelyassociated differences in length of farming experience) appear todistinguish farmers holding the Steward and Conservative perspec­tives from those defining the successful farmer as Manager orAgrarian, but age differences do not easily separate either pair ofperspectives. Neither are different views of success attributable todifferent amounts of formal education or farm magazine use, or togross differences in enterprise structure. Future studies of farmers'goals and values should therefore include a broader array of po­tential socialization influences, such as ethnic or religious back­ground, as well as such characteristics of the farmer's social envi­ronment as family structure.

The ambiguous meaning of age leaves open the question ofwhether to attribute differences among images of the successfulfarmer to a farmer's life stage or to generational, age-cohort differ­ences in values. The less experienced farmers who predominateamong those holding the Manager perspective may be projectingon their successful-farmer ideal the younger farmer's need to pur­sue expansion and capital accumulation in the early stages of en­terprise and family development. Similarly, the older farmers whodefine the successful farmer as Steward may be in a stage where ag-

Images of Sueass- Walter 67

gressive expansion is less important, and slack resources are avail­able to pursue less strictly economic values. On the other hand, therelative youth of the farmers in the Manager group may reflect theemphasis that agricultural colleges, farm media, and other institu­tional agents of career socialization have accorded the analytical as­pects of farm management during their early farming years.

If age-associated differences are attributable to life stage, thenyounger farmers' views of success may well change over time to in­clude some of the values that define the Steward and Conservative(and perhaps other, different) perspectives. If they represent co­hort differences, then these farmers should continue to make man­agement skill their paramount criterion of success. This study can­not establish the likelihood of either of these scenarios. However,several older participants remarked during Q-sort debriefing thatthey would have arranged the statements differently when theywere younger, suggesting the importance of life stage in how afarmer thinks about success.

This study also suggests that farmers with different definitions offarming success often respond differently to alternative agriculture­related information and appeals. In this group of 68 farmers, mostof those defining the successful farmer as Steward or Conservativebelong to a local alternative agriculture organization or subscribeto an alternative farm magazine. Of all the study participants, thesefarmers can most easily equate the alternative groups' and publica­tions' emphasis on stewardship with their own view of success, sothat by joining or subscribing, they in effect help define themselvesas successful. Farmers defining success in other ways perhaps donot associate local alternative agriculture groups or their objectiveswith the aggressive, progressive management (and perhaps familyand community ties) that is a defining characteristic of the success­ful farmer they hope to be. However, many of the farmers who nowappear least interested in information about alternative agriculture(at least from organized sources or the mass media) may be at­tracted to such things as alternative cropping systems, holistic re­source management, and precision farming to the extent theycould be presented to them as consistent with progressive, analyti­cal farm management.

Finally, this study's findings indicate that farmers' attitudes to­ward farming success and farming in general are not easily summa­rized in a single measure like the typical agrarianism scale, a con­clusion also reached by Beus and Dunlap (1994a). Of the valueswhose relative importance most clearly distinguish the four views ofsuccess-stewardship, management skill, financial conservatism,and family-only the last is clearly articulated in most measures ofagrarianism.

68 Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, No.1, Spring 1997

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