6. Data
6.1. Survey Data
The study is based on a nationwide survey of organic and
conventional farmers in Ireland, which was conducted between July
andNovember 2008. For the organic farmers complete address listswere
available fromthe organic certification bodies3 and a survey was sent to
each farmer on the list. A response rate of 40% was achieved following an
announcement of the survey in the Irish Farmers' Journal newspaper and
one reminder letter. The data for the conventional farmers were
collected through the Teagasc National Farm Survey (NFS; Connolly
et al., 2008). TheNFS is based on approximately 1100 farms representing
110,000 farms nationally. The NFS data are EU-Farm Accountancy Data
Network (FADN) data for Ireland. The data were restricted to farms that
have cattle and/or sheep (drystock farms) since significant numbers of
organic farmers, necessary for an empirical analysis, can be found in this
category. Finally, the overall data set comprises of 546 farms.