Farmer attitudes and evaluation of outcomes to on-farm environmental management
This is a two-year study for Defra, which the CCRI is undertaking along with Fera, the Centre for Rural Policy Research at the University of Exeter, and Bodsey Ecology Ltd. It builds directly upon previous work for Defra undertaken by CCRI with other partners in 2006-7 (Dwyer et al, 2007).
Defra has long recognised the role of the farmer and land manager in delivering environmental benefits. There has been a long-standing commitment to the provision of environmental benefits through incentives and regulation and more recently an increasing emphasis on voluntary industry-led provision through the Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE). The aim of this research is to explore the link between farmers’ attitudes to environmental management, their subsequent behaviour, and the perceived and actual environmental benefits. This will help inform Defra’s understanding of the way to approach interventions to achieve and maintain environmental benefits on farmland, despite alterations in regulatory, incentivised and voluntary approaches. In particular, it will assist Defra in reviewing the progress that CFE is making towards achieving its environmental goals, and the success of the voluntary approach in engaging farmers in environmental management.
CCRI is conducting 60 in-depth face-to-face interviews to explore farmers’ attitudes, motivations and barriers to environmental management and their land management behaviour, whilst detailed whole-farm ecological surveys will be undertaken by Fera and Bodsey Ecology to identify the environmental benefits of formal and informal environmental management practices. The results of both elements will be analysed in an integrated and iterative way to achieve a coherent understanding of how attitudes and management interact.
Jane Mills leads the CCRI team, assisted by Peter Gaskell, Christopher Short, Matt Reed, Janet Dwyer, Julie Ingram and Nick Lewis. The project started in January 2011.
