engleski

Future Expectations of Croatian Micro Entrepreneurs in Organic Production of Fruits and Vegetables

We present our qualitative research results based on twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with micro entrepreneurs in organic production of fruits and vegetables from all of the Croatian twenty counties and the City of Zagreb. The focus is on the theme of future expectations of study participants: How do they see their future? Which plans do they have? What do they expect? The main sources of information on future expectations were participants’ answers to a direct question about their future plans. Participants’ expectations of future have also been revealed when participants spoke about sustainability of their businesses, financial issues, marketing and distribution strategies, accommodation of their pressing needs, and other related topics. We identified the main tenor of future expectations and classified the participants into three groups, labelled “optimists”, “neutrals” and “pessimists”. Assuming, as often in scenario planning, that the most probable scenario is the one deduced by extrapolating current trends, we may say that the neutrals tend to see future in terms of the most probable scenario, while the optimists tend to lean toward the best-case, and the pessimists toward the worst-case scenario. Participants’ expectations exhibited four patterns in our analysis. First, expectations can be regarded as self-fulfilling prophecies: positive expectations both make positive outcomes more likely and are strengthened by positive outcomes, and the same holds for negative expectations and outcomes as well. Second, expectations may serve as coordination devices – when many people share similar expectations, collective action becomes more likely. Indeed, optimists seem to be more likely to initiate or join an association of eco-producers. Third, proximal and distal bias in expectations may be discerned among optimists vs. pessimists. Optimists tend to attribute positive emotions, and positive expectations which accompany positive emotions, to self and a close circle of family, friends, and colleagues, whereas pessimists are prone to attribute negative emotions, and concomitant negative expectations, to the more distant meso- and macro-level structures, such as “the capitalist system”. Fourth, optimists are more inclined to implement various strategies of deepening, broadening and regrounding, which have been considered in literature as contributing to rural development at the farm level. Our findings generally support sociological understanding of expectations as closely related to action. The optimists, neutrals, and pessimists alike spoke of numerous issues, related to the Croatian regulatory framework, subsidy system, control mechanisms, education of producers and consumers, and many others, that can only be resolved with the help of local and regional self-government and the national government. We hope to contribute by our research toward better understanding of conditions necessary to advance Croatian micro entrepreneurship in organic food production, and of obstacles that need to be surmounted en route to a more sustainable future in the village.

future expectations ; micro entrepreneurship ; organic food production ; organic production of fruits and vegetables ; rural futures

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