Measuring farmers' well-being: Influence of farm-level factors on satisfaction with work and quality of life

Abstract

To achieve social sustainability, there is a need to incorporate social metrics of farmers’ well-being into agricultural monitoring systems. We contribute to the operationalisation of the measurement of farmers’ well-being by determining how farm-level factors influence farmers’ satisfaction with their work and quality of life. Using a data sample of 1099 farms that are part of the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) in nine European countries, we tested a set of hypotheses related to work satisfaction and life quality perception based on a structural equation model. Satisfaction with on-farm work has a significant and substantial influence on satisfaction with quality of life. Farm-level aspects, such as working time, age of assets, financial situation of the farm and community engagement, significantly influenced farmers’ satisfaction with farming, but their joint effect explained less than one-fifth of the satisfaction. The results suggest that agricultural information systems intended to monitor and compare sustainability progress on farms would benefit from the integration of a metric measuring social concerns from the farmers’ point of view.