Andrew P. Barnes

A typology of dairy farmer perceptions towards climate change

Dairy farming is an industry which could potentially mitigate a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. However, perception and acceptance towards climate change is a significant barrier to voluntary adoption of best practice techniques. A number of countries have set targets for reducing emissions, of which Scotland has one of the most ambitious agendas. This paper presents results from an extensive survey of 540 dairy farmers, conducted in 2009, with the aim of understanding attitudes, values and intentions towards climate change. Only half of these farmers agreed that temperatures would rise in the future and this could significantly hinder adoption of voluntary measures to meet emissions targets. To explore this further a typology was developed on the responses to attitude and value statements, using principal components and cluster analysis methods. Six distinct types were found to exist which had a range of outlooks towards the impact of climate change in the future. However, five of the six types stated no intention to adopt practices which would reduce emissions. The typology approach supports diversified engagement strategies and a more innovation-led or resource maximisation view towards farming was expressed by several of these types. This may indicate that policy makers should focus on ‘win-win’ technologies as a means to effectively engage with these. However, a number of types were disengaged from the process which was driven by uncertainties towards projections for global warming and this needs to be addressed by both scientists and policy makers to ensure greater participation within the farming community.

From rhetoric to reality: farmer perspectives on the economic potential of biochar in China

Biochar has garnered much attention for its potential to improve farming productivity and sustainability by amending soil, enhancing crop yields, improving fertilizer use efficiency and sequestering carbon. However, few publications consider farmer perspectives on whether biochar is attractive as an agricultural input. This paper therefore investigates the micro-economics and social suitability of biochar in four contrasting Chinese agricultural systems, using linear optimization models and qualitative contextual data. Results demonstrate that commercially produced biochar is uneconomic as an independent farming input, whilst farm-produced biochar shows promise in just one of four case-study sites. This suggests that biochar research in China should shift away from on-farm production and application of pure biochar, towards combined biochar-inorganic fertilizer products.

Farmers and Climate Change: A Cross-National Comparison of Beliefs and Risk Perceptions in High-Income Countries

Climate change has serious implications for the agricultural industry—both in terms of the need to adapt to a changing climate and to modify practices to mitigate for the impacts of climate change. In high-income countries where farming tends to be very intensive and large scale, it is important to understand farmers’ beliefs and concerns about climate change in order to develop appropriate policies and communication strategies. Looking across six study sites—Scotland, Midwestern United States, California, Australia, and two locations in New Zealand—this paper finds that over half of farmers in each location believe that climate change is occurring. However, there is a wide range of beliefs regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change; only in Australia do a majority of farmers believe that climate change is anthropogenic. In all locations, a majority of farmers believe that climate change is not a threat to local agriculture. The different policy contexts and existing impacts from climate change are discussed as possible reasons for the variation in beliefs. This study compared varying surveys from the different locations and concludes that survey research on farmers and climate change in diverse locations should strive to include common questions to facilitate comparisons.

Impacts of greening measures and flat rate regional payments of the Common Agricultural Policy on Scottish beef and sheep farms

The latest Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms could bring substantial changes to Scottish farming communities. Two major components of this reform package, an introduction of environmental measures into the Pillar 1 payments and a move away from historical farm payments towards regionalized area payments, would have a significant effect on altering existing support structures for Scottish farmers, as it would for similar farm types elsewhere in Europe where historic payments are used. An optimizing farm-level model was developed to explore how Scottish beef and sheep farms might be affected by the greening and flat rate payments under the current CAP reforms. Nine different types of beef and sheep farms were identified and detailed biophysical and financial farm-level data for these farm types were used to parameterize the model. Results showed that the greening measures of the CAP did not have much impact on net margins of most of the beef and sheep farm businesses, except for ‘Beef Finisher’ farm types where the net margins decreased by 3%. However, all farm types were better off adopting the greening measures than not qualifying for the greening payments through non-compliance with the measures. The move to regionalized farm payments increased the negative financial impact of greening on most of the farms but it was still substantially lower than the financial sacrifice of not adopting greening measures. Results of maximizing farm net margin, under a hypothetical assumption of excluding farm payments, showed that in most of the mixed (sheep and cattle) and beef suckler cattle farms the optimum stock numbers predicted by the model were lower than actual figures on farm. When the regionalized support payments were allocated to each farm, the proportion of the mixed farms that would increase their stock numbers increased whereas this proportion decreased for beef suckler farms and no impact was predicted in sheep farms. Also under the regionalized support payments, improvements in profitability were found in mixed farms and sheep farms. Some of the specialized beef suckler farms also returned a profit when CAP support was added.

Drivers of farm-level adaptation to climate change in Africa: an evaluation by a composite index of potential adoption

Over recent decades, there has been increasing levels of research dedicated to assess drivers of farm-level uptake of adaptation strategies to climate change. The main purpose of this research being to determine how policy intervention can most effectively increase adoption. This paper aims to synthesise this past research in order to scale up uptake of farm-level adaptation strategies through a composite index of potential adoption in Africa. In doing so, we review the estimated coefficients of econometric regressions in 42 case studies published in peer-review journals to identify the factors that regularly explain adoption. We find that these common factors can be grouped into seven components, that is human capital, financial resources, infrastructure and technology, social interaction and governance, food security, dependence on agriculture and attitudes towards the environment. Using national-level indicators of these seven categories, we develop a composite index to inform potential adoption and test the robustness of the index in an in-depth sensitivity analysis. The results show that the highest likelihood of adoption of farm-level adaptation strategies is in Northern African countries namely Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco and in Southern African countries such as South Africa and Botswana. Conversely, they indicate that the lowest likelihood of adoption is situated in nations of the Sahel and Horn of Africa and in nations that have recently experienced conflict. We conclude that adoption is associated predominantly with governance, civil rights, financial resources and education. However, it is not necessarily driven by the magnitude of climate change impacts on agricultural production.

Farmer decision-making and risk perceptions towards outwintering cattle.

Increasing financial pressures has led farmers to manage cattle outside for the winter months. In temperate areas the environmental risks of outwintering cattle are exacerbated by cooler and wetter weather and identifying how farmers perceive these risks is essential to understanding how potential hazards could be mitigated. A series of workshops were conducted with cattle producers in England and Wales to understand their perceptions of the risks, their decision-making with respect to outwintering and their options for mitigating these risks. A range of risks were identified, but emphasis was placed on environmentally-related risks, such as soil damage, and on social risks, such as public perception of their treatment of the animals. The uncertainties due to the weather were highlighted as the most unmanageable risk. Another significant barrier to mitigating environmental impacts emerged from the lack of options towards choosing appropriate fields in which to conduct outwintering. We argue that the farmer-led nature of outwintering and the development of a wide range of systems is evidence of outwintering being a systems-innovation. We conclude that there is a role for Government intervention through the provision of information which clarifies cross-compliance breaches, but also encourages farmer-led innovation to develop more responsive outwintering systems.

Comparing decision-support systems in adopting sustainable intensification criteria

Sustainable intensification (SI) is a multifaceted concept incorporating the ambition to increase or maintain the current level of agricultural yields while reduce negative ecological and environmental impacts. Decision-support systems (DSS) that use integrated analytical methods are often used to support decision making processes in agriculture. However, DSS often consist of set of values, objectives, and assumptions that may be inconsistent or in conflict with merits and objectives of SI. These potential conflicts will have consequences for adoption and up-take of agricultural research, technologies and related policies and regulations such as genetic technology in pursuit of SI. This perspective paper aimed at comparing a number of frequently used socio-economic DSS with respect to their capacity in incorporating various dimensions of SI, and discussing their application to analyzing farm animal genetic resources (FAnGR) policies. The case of FAnGR policies was chosen because of its great potential in delivering merits of SI. It was concluded that flexible DSS, with great integration capacity with various natural and social sciences, are needed to provide guidance on feasibility, practicality, and policy implementation for SI.

A behavioural economics analysis of the impact of information and knowledge on CO2 capture and storage acceptance in the European Union

Abstract The paper analyses the impact that European Union citizens’ access to information on climate change has on their awareness of carbon capture and storage (CCS), perceived risks and benefits of using CCS and stated choice of preferred CCS options. We use a Eurobarometer dataset about awareness/acceptance of CCS and run structural equation models (SEM) for twelve EU countries with an average sample size of 1,100 observations per country. Results between the different countries are comparable and, alongside other determinants, access to information sources will significantly impact CCS awareness, perceived risk and benefits of CCS and preferences towards options of CCS.

The potential for adoption of climate smart agricultural practices in Sub-Saharan livestock systems

Livestock systems play an important role in the livelihoods of many rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa while being responsible for an important share of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. This study aimed to evaluate the potential for adoption of climate smart agricultural practices in Sub-Saharan livestock systems, related to the improvement in feed, animal husbandry, and grassland management. These practices present productivity and mitigation benefits and in some cases may also contribute to enhance resilience. In this study, we used a data set of 1538 farm households across nine Sub-Saharan countries. A mixed logit model was used to assess the influence on adoption and to estimate the probability of adoption. Our results show that there seems to be stronger influence of physical and financial capitals on adoption than the other capitals. Different types of capitals influence the uptake of different agricultural practices. Yet the probability of adoption would change across countries. The results of this study could help to refine adoption estimates calculated through global or regional modelling approaches and to inform the design of policies to better target investments in order to foster adoption.

Income mobility and income inequality in Scottish agriculture

The paper proposes the use of a range of alternative measures to provide a rounded evaluation of the distributional consequences of farm income mobility, where this multifaceted approach is designed to shed light both on the extent to which farm income inequality is a short-run phenomenon due to transitory shocks rather than a chronic or persistent problem due to structural factors, and on the nature of the dynamic processes driving changes in farm income inequality over time. An illustrative empirical study of Scottish agriculture using Farm Accounts Survey data reveals that the majority of farm income inequality was structural in nature despite a substantial degree of income risk due to the volatility of agricultural incomes. Results on the micro-dynamics of inequality change have to be interpreted with caution due to the particular rules governing the assignment of farm identifiers in the survey.