Análisis de la oferta

Overall, 71% of respondents came from the Manawatu-Wanganui Region. This proportion was similar to the actual proportion of agriculture and fishery workers in Manawatu-Wanganui region over the total of the two regions covered by our study:

5_{See question 69 in Appendix 0. The upper part of the scale corresponds to category 3 and above; with 5}

meaning ‘total control’.

6_{546 + 1210 = 1756. The remaining 44 respondents correspond to organic farmers, who were included in}

the sample irrespective of their farming categories, whether or not they had native forest on their property, or the region their farm was based.

Chapter 5: Research design

Manawatu-Wanganui and Wellington (67.1%) (Statistics New Zealand 2001, Table 18).7

b. Sex

The majority of respondents were male (86.3%). The survey targeted the person in charge of decisions on the farm. There was no comparable data available in the reports of Statistics New Zealand on the country’s farming population.

c. Ethnicity

The majority of respondents (93.2%) were Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent), 2% defined themselves as Pakeha-Maori, and 1.1% as Maori. The proportion of Maori in the survey was in line with the proportion in the agriculture industry of Maori employers and self-employed without employees8 _{(2.7%) (Statistics New}

Zealand 2001, Tables 15 and 15a).

d. Age

The average age of the thesis sample was between 40 and 49 years old, which was close to the average age in the Manawatu-Wanganui (40 years old) and the Wellington (39) regions, the North Island (40) and New Zealand in general (40) (Statistics New Zealand 2001, Table 43). However, again, there was no equivalent in the reports of Statistics New Zealand regarding the age of farm managers.

7 _{The Statistics New Zealand reports present compiled results from the most recent census of the}

agriculture sector at the time of our questionnaire. Such censuses typically target all the farming population of the country, as the 2002 report states: “The target population for the 2002 Agricultural Production Census was all units that were engaged in ‘agricultural production activity’ (…) with the intention of selling that production and/or which owned land that was intended for agricultural activity during the year ended 30 June 2002. The target population also includes businesses and persons commonly referred to as ‘lifestylers’ engaged in agricultural production activity” (Statistics New Zealand 2003a, p. 83). The 2002 New Zealand Statistics survey had a response rate of 81% (Statistics New Zealand 2003a, p. 84).

Chapter 5: Research design

e. Farming activity

The vast majority of respondents were farming full time (90.6%). There was no available data from the national census to compare with.

The proportions of each farm type in the sample were as follows: 77.3% of respondents were meat farmers, 18.4% dairy farmers, and 4.3% horticulture farmers. The percentage of the different farm types by region in the respondents’ sample, and a comparison with data from the national census (Statistics New Zealand 2003b, Table Farms by Farm Type (ANZSIC) and Region) can be found in table 5.2.

Table 5. 2 Comparison of percentage of farm type per region of study found in the respondents sample and in the region census done by Statistics New Zealand (N = 806).

Region Farm Types Study sample Regional populationa

Manawatu- Wanganui

Meat 78.0% 61.6%

Dairy 19.5% 17.2%

Horticulture 3.0% 8.7%

Wellington DairyMeat 77.0%16.0% 46.6%11.2%

Horticulture 7.0% 15.5%

a_{: The percentage for the regional population are from the 2003 national census (Statistics New Zealand 2003b,}

Table Farms by Farm Type (ANZSIC) and Region)

As stated earlier, all 44 registered organic farmers identified in the two regions were contacted. Overall, 37 respondents (4.6%) self-identified as organic farmers and 625 (78.4%) as conventional. However, 135 (16.9%) reported being both organic and conventional. This latter figure was unexpected, and suggests either that some people claimed to be organic without being associated with organic groups or without following recognised organic principles, or more people were registered organic than expected.9 _{Unfortunately, the 2002 agriculture census provides only incomplete data on}

the number of farms, or hectares being fully organic or in transition towards being so (Statistics New Zealand 2003a), which prevented comparisons from being made with the study sample.

9_{These people may have become organic between the census and the present study, or not been captured}

Chapter 5: Research design

f. Farm size

In the sample, the median farm size from Wellington was 109.2 ha, and the median farm size from Manawatu-Wanganui was 125.6 ha. Both these numbers were larger than the regional medians, especially for the Wellington region (Wellington: between 20 and 39 ha; Manawatu-Wanganui: between 60 and 79 ha; Statistics New Zealand 2003c).

The median meat farm in the present study was 126.6 ha, the median dairy farm 125.4 ha, and the median horticulture farm 9.7 ha. The sample dairy and horticulture median farm size were comparable with the 2002 New Zealand Agriculture Production Census (dairy: between 100 and 199 ha; horticulture: between 5 and 9 ha). In contrast, the median meat producer respondent had a larger farm than the national median (between 60 and 79 ha) (Statistics New Zealand 2003d).10

Lifestyle blocks represented a relatively small proportion of the sample. Following the definition of the Ministry for the Environment (less than 10 ha; Ministry for the Environment 2000, p. 26), lifestyle blocks represented 10.9% of respondents; following the definition used by Cook and Fairweather (between 0.4 and 35 ha; Cook and Fairweather 2005, p. 6), lifestyle blocks corresponded to 22.8% of the sample.

g. Presence of native forest

About two thirds of the respondents had native forest on their farm (64%). Of the 515 respondents with native forest, 70% had fragments of more than 1 ha size. The average number of fragments of more than 1 ha was three. More respondents from the Wellington region had native forest than from the Manawatu-Wanganui region (69.4% and 62.1%, respectively; _2_{= 3.843, df = 1, p = 0.050). This was consistent with} results from the 2002 New Zealand Agricultural Production Census (Statistics New Zealand 2003b, Table Hectares Used and Farms by Land Use by Region). In contrast, the present sample included more farmers with native forest than the regional proportion (38.4% of farms in Wellington had native forest, and 33.8% of Manawatu-Wanganui farms). As in the 2002 New Zealand Agricultural Production Census (Statistics New Zealand 2003b, Table Hectares and Farms by Land Use and Farm Type (ANZSIC)), dairy farms were found to have the least amount of native forest relative to the farm

Chapter 5: Research design

size. Meat and horticulture farms in the thesis sample showed a similar ratio of native forest area to the total farm area, whereas, nation-wide, horticulture farms tended to have more native forest per farm hectare.

h. Representativeness of the sample

To summarize, although the characteristics of the respondents in the present study were overall close to those of the Manawatu-Wanganui and Wellington regional and national farming population, the sample differed markedly from the New Zealand census in the proportion of farms with native forest, and the number and size of meat farms. The topic of the survey could explain such a bias. Although the cover letter as well as the questionnaire instructions stressed that both the answers of farmers with and without native forest on their farm were important for the survey, farmers with forest may have felt more concerned about the subject, while farmers without forest may have feared being judged for not having native forest. Therefore, the study represents a better picture of meat and dairy farms than horticulture farms, and farmers with rather than without native forest.

III. Description of the questionnaire