SUCCESSION STATUS OF ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL FAMILY FARMS IN SOUTHWESTERN SLOVENIA

Abstract

To assure long term survival of family farms, well regulated farmsuccession is of vital importance. This is a complex process wheremany factors influence the final event, the ultimate transfer of familyfarm from older to younger generation. In addition, organicagriculture is also becoming an increasingly important factor forthe future existence of the family farm. The aim of this paper is toanalyse 17 conventional and 30 organic family farms from theSouthwestern part of Slovenia regarding their current successionstatus in order to find out which group of farms has better currentsuccession status. The methodology was based on the decisionanalysis technique, DEX, an expert system shell for qualitativedecision modelling and support. The multi-attribute decision modelwas developed and applied to the family farms data, obtainedby the use of a standardized questionnaire on the familyfarm succession process. The results confirm our assumption andindicate that organic farms have a better succession situation.