Farmers’ motives, goals, values, and participation in agricultural training programs: Uncovering the links in short food supply chains

Despite the ambitious European policy targets for upskilling the actors operating in the agrifood sector, farmers' participation rates in agricultural training programs remain low in many countries. To understand why, a pivotal step is to answer two questions. First, what motivates farmers to attend training activities? Second, how do their goals and values interplay with their motivational profiles to affect their intention to participate and actual participation in training? With two cross-sectional quantitative studies focusing on Greece, which has the lowest percentage of agricultural training attendees in the European Union, we aimed to address these questions. Building upon the Self-Determination Theory's autonomous/controlled motivation distinction and relying on data from farmers who distribute their products through short food supply chains (n_{Study 1} = 99, n_{Study 2} = 93), we arrived at a paradox: Although autonomous motivation is critical for shaping farmers' willingness to attend training activities, participation in previous programs is associated with controlled motivation. Attendees of such programs are externally motivated and amotivated individuals who attach higher importance to professional success. At the other end of the spectrum, internally motivated farmers who pursue collective goals and endorse the value of self-development express a high willingness to participate that, however, is not translated into attendance. From a practical standpoint, this paradox reveals that connecting participation in agricultural training with external rewards (e.g., access to subsidies) creates an unfavorable environment for energizing potential attendees' volitional motivation. The present work contributes to our knowledge of the factors catalyzing participation in agricultural training programs by indicating that farmers are more willing to participate in such initiatives when they value learning and associate it with attaining personal development and collective goals than when they must participate.