A Systematic Literature Review to Develop a Conceptual Model to Assess Farmers' Sustainable Agriculture Potential for Organic Use in Rice Cultivation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The researcher found a timely need to assess Sri Lankan Rice Farmers' Sustainable Agriculture (SA) potential, their readiness to adopt more organic-centric farming, and the institutional help they receive for such adoption. Since no straightforward assessment method has been found in the literature, this paper describes how the researcher developed a conceptual framework and suggests indicators to explain the constructs for such an assessment. The conceptual model and indicators are drawn through a systematic literature review. The systematic literature review helped to find a set of credible and relevant articles for the study and provided a structured way of extracting usable findings for this study. Resilience theory (RT) properties are the foundation selected to develop the conceptual framework combined with the Rural Livelihood Assessment Framework (RLAF). The previous research findings of SA studies show that capital assets described in RLAF, Human, Social, Financial, Physical, and Natural, would adequately explain farmers' SA potentials. The suggestions from RT on ecosystem resilience can describe the farmer's predictive behaviours in this transitioning ecosystem. The researcher believes this conceptual combination is adequate to explore the unknowns mentioned in the study's objective. Also, the literature provides insights to develop an indicator framework which will guide the development of a research instrument explaining the latent constructs of the model in future research.