French Quality and Ecolabelling Schemes 405practices, and their perception of environmental problems. Information on the
farmers’ quality organizations and guidelines also were collected in order to analyse
the extent to which recommendations on environmental practices were included
in the organization’s rules and guidelines.
Results of Statistical Analyses^4
Farm size and adoption of environmental practices
A factor analysis was conducted to identify groups of farmers that share similar
characteristics – such as high environmental grades, size of farm, income, ecolabel
or quality approach followed, or number of workers – and to determine if either
large or small farms tend to be associated with high total environmental scores or
if either large or small farms are especially likely to be involved in quality or eco-
labelling schemes. Four distinct clusters were identified in this analysis (Figure 18.1).
One cluster (cluster A) was composed of farmers with relatively small farms, low
Total variance explained by each component
F1 40% F2 30%
Component Matrix
Quality code .057 .841
SAU .740 –.268
UTH .789 .352
MBS .884 .036
PS1 + PS2 –.209 .763
Extraction Method: Principal Component AnalysisFigure 18.1 Factor analysis of quality codes, SAU, UTH, MBS and PS1 + PS2