On-farm change can be expressed via game-playing and scenario testing.
To test this four-way schema to measure on-farm change, our researchers surveyed a sample of New Zealand dairy and drystock (sheep/beef cattle) farms on the type of change entailed in adopting four practices commonly recommended to reduce the damaging effects of livestock agriculture on water quality and biodiversity. The four practices were: fencing of streams to exclude livestock, fencing of wet areas (wetlands) to exclude livestock, the use of cover crops to reduce nutrient losses following winter grazing, and the creation of ungrazed laneway buffers to prevent nutrient emissions.
As might be expected, the researchers found that more farmers adopted simpler practices than more complex ones. Adopting a practice that entails strategic or tactical change was far less common than adopting a practice that does not.
It’s been common in research, and when designing policy extension programmes, to resort to “personality type” arguments about the likelihood of farmers adopting change on farm. Some farmers are inherently innovative, and others are not, it’s said. But this framework suggests that “early adopters” are able to adopt a practice quicker than others because they only have to make a simple change to their farm system, whereas for those who lag behind, adopting the same practice may entail a complex, or even a tactical or strategic change. These kinds of changes are more costly, more difficult and take much more time to consider and implement. The early adopters are not necessarily so-called “leading” practitioners or “innovative” farmers.
The researchers conclude that if the likely magnitude of the impacts of change is not adequately understood, the role of other determinants, such as personality, is likely to be overstated. They also conclude that those that adopt a practice later because it is a complex change are unlikely to be able to learn much from the early adopters for whom the change is simple.