1 I was hired to do a jurisdiction review and literature review to - PDF document

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I was hired to do a jurisdiction review and literature review to understand the process to BMP adoption and behavior. So particularly, what are the socio demographic and other factors that contribute to BMP adoption and then looking particularly at what motivates farmers and attitudinal factors. So the second objective of this jurisdictional scan or literature review is to really be able to understand how other places might have used segmentation and whether it has been successful. And finally, if we could find out lessons and messaging from other programs that could be brought forward into for OMAFRA programs. So the focus was on looking at adoption of climate mitigation as strategies on the farm and we looked at particularly eleven primarily soil health BMP’s and we were looking at cropping systems. So I was looking in particularly for anything that focused on soya beans and wheat because those are the primary crops in Ontario. And fortunately, there’s a beautiful study that was just conducted I think out of Davis. And the person did a beautiful summary of all the different factors that have contributed to soil BMP adoption in the US. And so, Bruce has that paper and anybody can write him and he can provide a copy of it. It’s by Liz Carlisle and it just came out in 2016. 2

So when you review this literature it’s extensive, and so people focus on different factors and one; the first thing I thought of well the literature tells us there’s not really one set of factors that contributes they’re significant sometimes, sometimes a factor’s not significant. And overall, any literature review will tell you that you can’t pinpoint to sort of single things that motivate people. And one of the reasons is that there has never really been a really good framework for theoretical framework for understanding behaviourand looking at these factors. So we use this a reason action approach, and what it did is it allowed us to take all of these different variables to be assessed and put them in these different boxes. And so I just want to walk you through these boxes because I think when you’re talking about communication and engagement strategies, you’re gonnabe figuring out which of these boxes you want to focus on. So there’s a whole pile of background factors so the age of producer, demographics, income and all of that. And ah- but they really don’t help us understand what motivates the farmer to act. And so, then we wanted to bundle those things into ah behavioural beliefs, and normative beliefs, and controlled beliefs, and I’ll explain what each of those are. So behavioural beliefs are what do the farmers think about efficacy of the practice. A: is that practice actually going to lead to the environmental outcome envisioned. So if we’re talking about water quality, if you talk to farmer’s they’ll say: “my farm isn’t 3

gonna have an impact on lake Erie. So I shouldn’t do water”. So that’s efficacy of the environmental efficacy of the practice. But there could also be financial efficacy, so many practices benefit the farmer, but they might not know that that’s true, they might not believe that it’s true. So those two factors, the financial efficacy and the environmental efficacy are very important in the behavioural change. And then there’s the whole social construct around the practice, and so these are the normative beliefs how does practice fit within the community of farming? Is it seen as odd or weird that you’re undertaking this practice? If you are adopting, so I read one study which was interesting from the University of Guelph, and some farmers reported when they were interviewed that they thought that other farmers that were adopting BMP’s were just being show - offs. So there’s this the whole kindanormative frame around adoption of practices or being an early adopter. And finally, there’s Control beliefs and these are capacity beliefs – so even if you believe that uh behavior led to environmental outcome, that was supposed to be achieved and it was financially beneficial, you might not have the capital access to change your behaviour. You might require additional extension and support or you might need access to specialized equipment, which was what was found in this review of adoption of soil BMP’s. So these are the 3 different compartments – you can start to think about by figuring out what is the barrier to adoption that’s facing the individuals that you are trying to target, and then develop your engagement strategies within those boxes. 3

Again we reviewed factors influencing adoption and as I told you the result - It depends. It’s context and locally specific factors that are important. In more than 70 reports we assessed, age, education, farm size, income, environment and climate (so primarily rainfall), technical assistance, and participation in previous components. Those all tended to be the most significant variables, they weren’t always significant and things like age can work into two different directions. So young farmers might be motivated to adopt new practices for completely different reasons than an older farmer. Older farmers might know more about their land, or be more willing to take risks because they are near the end of their careers. So all sorts of reasons and some inconsistency in how these variables are treated. The second interesting thing is that in nearly all cases, profitability was not the most important factor for adoption of practice. Now I’m gonna say that with a grain of salt, because there’s not wide spread of adoption of many BMP’s, and they’re on a cost share basis. So obviously when farmers are undertaking some of them merits of cost to them, and a there probably could be more uptake if there were financial incentives. And we know from the economics literature that financial incentives are important. So the upshot of this is that without if everything is in place, the practices, efficacious from an environmental and financial perspective, if the farmer is not motivated, the practice won’t happen. And so we really want to focus in on these normative factors and the social context through the farming. 4

In terms of Ontario this is just like a very quick summary of the factors that we found in studies here are environmental and financial efficacy were important reasons why farmers participated in the environmental farm plan program, personal benefit was a reason why farmers were willing to participate in the water quality program- forget the exact name of it, the conservation programs- conservation authority programs. Umm important motivation in the study from Guelph which looked at social context and factors, is farmers really were interested in not only in the financial benefits but what were the health benefits to the land, and the animals, and people. So this goes back to some of the styles that might be important. Ethical attitude towards the environment is important but only for a small segment of farmers, Social networks and trust as it turned out didn’t turn out to be significant in any of the studies that we looked at. And so what I think it’s they just weren’t described in a granular enough fashion to pick up some of the differences. Another thing that we think- well your neighbour is doing a practice, and uh they’re early adopter that thought the practice would diffuse through the community. There’s no evidence of proximity or that following what your neighbours do is how farmers behave. And so I thought that was also quite interesting, that’s actually one of the reasons I think that it’s important to look through the segmentation literature because the adoption diffusion model has basically not stood the test of time. 5

We reviewed motivations for participations in sixteen programs in US, Australia, Canada, and one in Europe. Most farmers participated in water quality programs to avoid regulation. The prominence of environmental sensitivity areas on your land would also increase your adoption because you’re worried about the public perceptions of how you’re managing those lands. And the funding was finally another important reason so you participate in a program in order to access cost share dollars. The main barriers to participation and this came out loud and clearly in environmental farm plan reviews as well is that time commitment and paperwork drives farmers away, lack of cost-share funding or adequate funding for some of the BMP’s, so for extensive BMPS’s some cost share programs might only cover 10 - 20%. So it’s simply not of interest to the farmer. Approval times, again, if you start your paperwork and it takes you months to get an approval for the cost share program it becomes not worthy your effort. Lack of understanding of the profitability of the practice is important, it speaks for the need of experimental sites where farmers can see demonstrated benefits. And then this whole lack of trust in government and problems around confidentiality. So there’s still a perception that farmers can be sued for some of their practices and that there is a liability to participating in a farm plan. and I think that’s quite interesting because a 6

lot the literature argues well that’s simply not true, but I’m not sure it’s not true because I don’t think there’s been a court case where it’s been tested. So I think that concern is valid and I think that it will continue to prohibit participation in certain kinds of programs. 6