Structural equations modelling applied to the study of Communities Supported Agriculture (CSAs) located in the Southeastern region of Brazil

Abstract

Food production is an increasingly relevant issue in the current framework associated with food and water security and future years projections. In addition, the production of organic food has gained significance in recent years, revealing a growing change in the population's consumption habits. The Communities Supported Agriculture (CSAs) play an important role in enabling productive areas for planting crops in agroecological and biodynamic standards. Given this, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between different CSAs variables located in the Southeastern region of Brazil to validate or not the hypotheses created. Thus, the study was designed as a descriptive research and quantitative approach, using an inductive logic survey. In addition, the methodology was set up with the support of the Structural Equation Modeling technique. The study confirmed the hypothesis (H1) that socioeconomic characteristics positively influence CSAs’ performance. The limitations were associated with the method of data collection and the difficulties imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.