what is the criteria that should be adopted in farming the emotional aims
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Answer:
In order to make a difference on the ground, policies, innovations, and best practices, must be
implemented on-farm. Researchers, policy-makers, and other organisations have long investigated
why some recommendations are never adopted by farmers, and much of this work has used
behavioural approaches. The common rationale for such work tends to proceed along the lines of, ‘if
only we can understand farmers better, then we can influence their behaviours and ultimately
convince them to adopt our recommendations’. There is now a large body of agricultural literature on
behavioural change, which tends to focus on individual farmers. Limited attention has, however,
been placed on consolidating the lessons learned from the plethora of studies, which is particularly
concerning given that recent studies continue to identify significant barriers to behavioural change
amongst farmers.
This report set out to review the lessons learned from existing behavioural change work in
agriculture, and supplemented the insights gained with knowledge from similar behavioural work
conducted in other fields, such as health, medicine, and diet. We reviewed over 200 papers towards
one clear objective – to understand how behavioural change approaches in the context of farmer
decision-making could be improved, or even as we suggest, evolve.
If the aim is to focus on individual farmer behaviour change, the following key
recommendations were made in the literature:
1. Target messages carefully – the overwhelming message from the literature was the need to
identify your audience before you communicate to them. Through making an effort to understand
their workflows, you may get a better sense of which messages they respond to. In general, one
of the key findings was that people generally respond better to positive or gain messaging as
compared with negative or loss messaging. AHDB should, as far as possible, present optimistic
messages to farmers, stressing the benefits of adopting particular behaviours.
2. Fund and encourage knowledge exchange activities – good knowledge exchange and
education initiatives, ideally delivered in a face-to-face manner or making the most of active
demonstrations, were identified as key factors in influencing behaviour. Knowledge exchange
activities must be sustained, not just using one-off events. Continued engagement should be seen
as something more valuable than simply providing information through leaflets. AHDB already
uses its ‘farm excellence platform’ to facilitate knowledge exchange with farmers, and it is
considered that such active demonstrations combined with face-to-face advice (ideally through
trusted individuals), are the best way of getting information to farmers, but also for receiving
knowledge back from them.
3. Prove the value and ease of adoption – if farmers do not perceive that there is value in adopting
a new behaviour, then they are likely to stick with the status quo. AHDB could ensure that it finds
ways to prove the value of adopting all of the tools, policies, and practices that are recommended.
As above, active demonstrations could be a good way to do this, as well as collating evidence
from long-term studies that prove benefits to a farmer’s bottom line, or other aspects of their farm
business. It is much easier to encourage adoption if recommended actions are already matched
with the workflow of the farmer, and if they address relevant tasks (behaviour change on the part
of the farmer is not then needed).
4. Incentivise behaviour change, including nudging – where behaviour change was incentivised,
there were signs of positive change, although perhaps not in the long-term (more research needed
here), and only if rewards were sustained. Thus, if AHDB is to incentivise behaviour change, it
should ensure that the rewards can be sustained, and that it uses other forms of interventions to
underpin financial rewards (e.g. education).
The overwhelming message from the study, however, suggests that it may be problematic to focus
on influencing individual farmer behaviour in preference to stimulating wider social change, which
necessitates actions from organisations, research institutions, policy-makers and funders alike to
reach out across a farmer’s ‘ring of confidence’. Many of the reviewed papers argued that it is
difficult to change individual behaviour without including trusted people, such as advisors, family,
and peers, and without wider social and organisational change.
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