Estonian Farmers' Opinions on Their Environmentally Friendly Behaviour and Knowledge

The topic of farmers' environmental knowledge and behaviour is highly relevant due to the recent environmental catastrophes being a major source of concern for wider public, and the rise of fuel and food prices, and the objectives set by the CAP having raised discussion of the role on agriculture and its connection with sustaining environment. The aim of the research is to study the opinions of Estonian farmers on their interest towards and knowledge on the nature and environmental behaviour based on their self-evaluation on the intensity of their agricultural production as well as characteristic traits of certain types of environmentally friendly behaviour to them. The data from a survey of Estonian farmers conducted in 2008 is used in the research. The relationships between the variables are analysed using the Kendall's rank correlation. On average, farmers have reported high interest and good knowledge on the nature and environmentally friendly behaviour like preference of Estonian products, sparing use of water and electricity, sorting of waste, composting, consumption of organic and preservative free food, and limiting the use of household chemicals that is very or rather characteristic of them. The significant positive correlations appeared between the variables of environmentally friendly behaviour.