The social bases of agrarian environmentalism: a comparative analysis of New York and Michigan farm operators

An empirical investigation of the factors that account for variation in the environmental attitudes of farmers contrasts two competing analytical frameworks -- one from environmental attitudes research among the general public, & the other from the emerging ecological critique of large-scale agriculture -- & utilizes them to develop rival hypotheses. Survey data collected from random samples of farmers in NY & Mich (total N = 869) indicate that education, typically considered in the environmental attitudes literature to be the most important variable, bears little relation to three indicators of concern about general & agricultural environmental problems. Farm size is inversely related to these attitudinal indexes of environmental concern, consistent with the ecological critique of large-scale agriculture. These results suggest that the ecological critique framework tends to be the most relevant in accounting for farmers' environmental attitudes, while a further variable from the environmental attitudes research tradition -- political liberalism -- exhibits substantial positive relationships with the three indexes of general & agrarian environmentalism. Noneconomic orientation toward agriculture was found to be an important antecedent of concern with soil erosion. Some suggestive but inconclusive findings regarding the role of economic security in facilitating proenvironmental attitudes among farm operators are discussed & recommended as a focus for future research. 4 Tables. Modified HA.