| Abstract: | The commitment to farm has been regarded as dependent primarily on the farm′s financial viability, from which standpoint submarginal and part-time farms continue to survive only because of income derived from a nonfarm job. The significance of the relative conditions and rewards of farm and nonfarm work for the satisfactions and relative commitments to different jobs, although often recognized, have been rarely analyzed. This study examines hypotheses that satisfaction with, and commitments to, farm and to nonfarm work are socially constructed from the institutional and organizational conditions of work. Analysis of data from a male, part-time, farmer sample reveals that commitment to, and satisfaction with, farming is primarily contingent on the intrinsically rewarding aspects of both farm and nonfarm work. Satisfaction with farming is primarily dependent on the intrinsic rewards of farming activity alone, but this relationship is enhanced as the status of the part-time farmer′s nonfarm job rises. As is typical of "hobby farms," farm performance measures - gross sales and net farm income - are less important to the fanning commitments of part-time than of farmers in general. Part-time farmers′ satisfactions with, and commitments to, their nonfarm jobs are constrained by the intrinsic rewards derived from farming even as they are strengthened by the intrinsic and economic rewards of the nonfarm job. The spouse′s involvement in farming, or lack of it, as well as the farmer′s age and education moderate his commitment to farming, thereby enhancing his commitment to the nonfarm job. |
