Abstract

Agribusiness managers as the major players in the agricultural industry greatly determine agribusiness practicesand affectperception about agricultural sustainability. This study develops a framework to analyze howagribusiness students, the future agribusiness managers, in California view sustainable agriculture. Aneducational program was created and implemented to raise awareness and educate students about agriculturalsustainability. Pre-and post-surveys were administered to collect relevant data and a conditional logit model wasestimated. Our main results suggest that: 1) the educational program is more influential on the ratings of theexternal social and environmental sustainability than on economic and internal social sustainability; 2)participating in the educational program helped future managers realize the importance of obtaining stableincome to achieve economic sustainability; and 3) water quality and farm continuity are important attributesinfarm environmental and internal social sustainability. Given the lack of consensus on how to defineagricultural sustainability, this study provides insightful information to help understand how future agriculturemanagers perceive sustainable farming.

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