The role of dairy company policies in support of farm green infrastructure in the absence of government stewardship payments

Intensive dairy farming has substantial impacts on freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Determining how to mitigate them while increasing production is driving the quest for sustainable milk production internationally. Green infrastructure (G.I.) provides private and public ecosystem services, including mitigation of farming environmental impacts. However, there are implementation barriers among farmers. New Zealand government supports farmer self-regulation as long as farmers meet environmental targets. Farmers are neither compensated for reducing environmental impacts, nor for setting aside G.I. in support of nature conservation. Dairy companies are under increasing pressure to ensure socially acceptable milk production practices among farmer suppliers. They may play a role in encouraging farmers to implement G.I. as a way of helping farmers meet regulatory compliance, and best farming practice. Using a content analysis of company policies, the role of dairy companies in encouraging G.I. among farmers is explored. Results indicate companies are concerned about the effects, and perception, of poor environmental farming practices on their profitability, and have developed some riparian G.I. policies, with government and farmer support. However, policies are farm-focused and are limited to one year, and thus lack the capacity to encourage G.I. in support of key ecosystem services, such as water cleansing and support for indigenous biodiversity that require landscape scaled networks and longer periods. Even at the farm scale, a majority of companies lack policies that encourage significant G.I. networks. Policies suggest companies, and by extension farmers, lack sufficient motivation to protect or restore them voluntarily. Under these conditions, significant G.I. is unlikely to develop under self-regulation, unless supplemented through motivating government stewardship payments.     

Forester networks: The intersection of private lands policy and collaborative capacity

Privately owned forestland provides abundant ecosystem goods and services to society at scales beyond the individual forest parcel. However, successful mechanisms to encourage broad-scale management in privately owned, multifunctional, landscapes are relatively limited. In the United States, state agency and private foresters may be poised to help facilitate landscape-scale management given their role as gatekeepers to private landowner incentive programs or emerging markets for ecosystem goods and services. A key question remains as to the collaborative capacity of public and private sector foresters, especially in the face of evolving private forestry incentive programs, some of which have shifted toward public–private partnerships (PPP's). We used qualitative interviews and a social network survey with professional foresters in Northern Wisconsin, an area with a high demand for diverse forest ecosystem services, to identify the structure of current business networks among land managers in the region and characteristics of these relationships that may influence collaboration. Of the nearly 300 different individual professionals identified, most (86%) were state, consulting, or industry foresters, suggesting a relatively homogeneous network of professionals and potential need for other types of natural resource professionals to tie into existing foresters’ networks. We found that central network positions were occupied by all three types of foresters, while the qualitative analysis suggested the private forestry incentive program is likely driving, in part, network configuration. Interviews yielded a nuanced understanding of foresters’ relationships, including the impact of forest policy changes on public–private partnerships and specifically the growing role of private foresters in providing private lands forestry services and the need for successful mechanisms to reduce conflict and improve collaborative capacity among professionals.     

Integrating preferences and social values for ecosystem services in local ecological management: A framework applied in Xiaojiang Basin Yunnan province,China

Previous works have made great progress in mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) that are directed toward exploring various aspects of ecological changes and economic values. These preferences, however, may neglect the important role of people who are the direct beneficiaries in this ecosystem. Therefore, including these stakeholders in ES assessment identifies their relations and perceptions between ecosystem services and society. In order to quantify and map these relations and perceptions, we designed and implemented an analytical framework based on the Public Participatory Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method to explore local stakeholders’ (Farmers, Government managers/Experts, and Company employees) similarities and differences in recognition of preferences and social values for ecosystem services in a typical Karst basin. Our results showed that remarkable differences appeared in preferences for ES across three groups. Farmers gave more preferences to provisioning services, Government managers/Experts to regulating and cultural services, and Company employees’ preferences were individualized. The spatial distributions and relations of social values for ES also showed great differentials. Provisioning services were always related to specific natural conditions, regulating services to forests, and cultural services to specific locations around tourism localities, forest, and wetland parks. The three stakeholder groups perceived more synergies than tradeoffs between the different ecosystem services. Landscape beauty was the most influential service in Farmers’ and Company employees’ perceptions, while Local climate change regulation was the most influential service in those of Government managers/Experts. The local stakeholders’ surveys can improve the enthusiasm of the local people to participate in environmental management and provide more socio-ecological information to help the managers alleviate the conflicts among different stakeholders.     

Engaging Australian small-scale lifestyle landowners in natural resource management programmes – Perceptions,past experiences and policy implications

This study explores Australian small-scale rural lifestyle landowners’ perceptions of and experiences with natural resource management (NRM) extension and incentive programmes and discusses means to better-match such programmes to these landowners’ NRM interests, assistance needs and delivery preferences. Data was collected from seventeen in-depth qualitative case-studies of small-acreage landholders located in the Noosa hinterland in south-east Queensland. These landholders indicated a high need for expert advice, labour and other resource assistance to achieve their property management objectives. They had, however, a low-level of awareness and understanding of available programmes (particularly incentive schemes) that could provide some of their needed support. Other key barriers to the landholders’ participation in these programmes were aversions to support providers, a perceived unsuitability of properties or irrelevance of particular incentive programmes, and concerns about programme application procedures or property-rights and value-related implications of engagement. Increased NRM engagement among small-scale lifestyle landowners may be achievable through amendments to existing support programmes and better communication of these programmes. The design and delivery of appropriate measures and messages may require collaborative partnerships, with knowledgeable and influential ‘go-to’ landowners and peer-mentoring networks playing a critical role. In many cases, conservation-focused incentive programmes may need to facilitate cooperative NRM among groups of adjoining micro-scale lifestyle landowners and allow greater flexibility in the length and allowable land and forest management practices of contractual agreements. Moreover, small-scale lifestyle landowners have much interest in and need for support to integrate multi-purpose agroforestry systems with other environmental and aesthetic property management goals. Workshops, follow-up field-days on participating properties, free one-on-one on-property advice, and NRM guides that include detailed case-study accounts of landowner experiences are important means of communicating the availability, administrative requirements and benefits of support programmes to small-scale lifestyle landowners.     

The ‘squeezed middle’: Identifying and addressing conflicting demands on intermediate quality farmland in Scotland

The growing demand for a wide range of private and public goods and services from a finite land resource is increasingly challenging for planners at local, regional, national and international scales. The Scottish Government's development of a Land Use Strategy has given salience to resolving conflicts and enhancing synergies in land use. In Scotland, the poorest quality farmland is often designated for nature and landscape conservation and the highest quality farmland often protected for food production. This means that many of the competitive pressures on land are experienced in what we term the ‘squeezed middle’. The paper identifies the multiple (and not exclusively economic) drivers of land use choices and, through an ecosystem services lens, explores three particular areas of land use conflict. These are (i) the continued high level of public support for farming, which has done little to address the problem of low farm incomes; (ii) the pressure to increase woodland planting on farm (and other) land; and (iii) conflicts associated with intensive game management, especially on sporting estates. Using the Scottish situation as an example, the heterogeneity of land use pressures means that there is a danger of the principles of the Land Use Strategy becoming lost in translation from national policy to practical land use decision-making. The appropriate scale for delivery of integrated ecosystem services may therefore be more local than current pilot projects, and may require more active participation of land managers. It may also require policy instruments that are more flexible in adapting to the local context, including payments for ecosystem services.     

An integrated approach for ex-ante evaluation of public policies for sustainable agriculture at landscape level

An integrated methodological framework for ex-ante evaluation and planning of public policies for sustainable agriculture at agro-landscape level is proposed. The components of the framework are to: (1) determine the private, i.e. farmers’, and public benefits associated to agro-landscapes, consisting of an agricultural land-use system, according to its performance for several market and non-market functions. Market forces determine the market benefits and preferences of society the non-market benefits; (2) explore and select potential sustainable agro-landscapes based on the private and public benefits associated with possible land-use alternatives; (3) define efficient public policy mechanisms for improving social net benefit of agro-landscapes.The framework is illustrated with a case study in a small dairy farming dominated agro-landscape in The Netherlands, with gross margin, landscape quality, nature value and environmental health as the analysed ecosystem functions. Alternative landscapes consisting of hedgerow configurations and grassland management practices were explored, yielding a set of alternatives representing the solution space in terms of change in private and public benefits. Policy mechanisms were defined to move from the current to a desired landscape based on changes in social net benefits. Moreover, the necessity of a modification in the current agri-environmental support was analysed for each landscape. The analysis considered all farmers in the agro-landscape jointly. The results for the case study showed potential prototypes of landscapes and their performance compared to the current landscape. Extension was the most efficient policy mechanism to promote the change to the socially optimum landscape alternative.     

Adoption potential of nitrate mitigation practices: an ecosystem services approach

Nitrate pollution from agricultural drainage has caused water quality concerns worldwide, but there are several promising technologies to help mitigate this environmental degradation. While these practices primarily aim to improve water quality, they may also provide other ‘additive’ benefits or ecosystem services and the awareness of such benefits may influence their potential to be adopted by farmers. To investigate the impact that perceived ecosystem services has on a practice's adoption potential, we used a mixed methods approach consisting of a literature review, producer surveys, and a group discussion to explore farmer interest in and perceived benefits (on-farm and regional) of seven subsurface drainage nitrate reduction practices (controlled drainage, bioreactors, wetlands, nitrogen management rate, nitrogen management timing, cover crops, and diversified crop rotations). The nitrogen management practices were shown to be accessible and realistic options for water quality improvement as they elicited high interest and had the highest level of compatibility. However, these practices did not provide many other complementary ecosystem services. Conversely, wetlands had a high literature review-derived ecosystem service count, but were considered to have low compatibility, and survey respondents indicated less interest in this practice. The practice of cover cropping showed more moderate, yet consistently positive results for all factors.     

Farmer perspectives of the on-farm and off-farm pros and cons of planted multifunctional riparian margins

The planting of riparian margins is a policy option for pastoral farmers in response to land use induced environmental issues such as declining water quality, stream bank erosion, and loss of aquatic and terrestrial habitat. We elicited the views and experiences as to pros and cons of planting riparian margins from two sets of dairy farmers from Taranaki, New Zealand: those who are or have planted riparian margins, and those who have not yet done so. Those farmers who have planted riparian margins identified 21 positive aspects of riparian margin plantings and 11 negative aspects of riparian margin plantings. Perceived benefits identified by this group include water quality, increased biodiversity, the provision of cultural ecosystem services, immediate direct benefits to farm management and the farm system, and in some instances increased productivity on-farm. In contrast, those farmers that had fenced but not planted their riparian margins did not consider that riparian margin plantings could add further benefits to that which could be achieved by excluding stock from waterways, and associated only negative perceptions with riparian margin plantings. Planting riparian margins is not cost neutral and will not deliver anticipated environmental benefits in every situation. However, we argue that riparian margin plantings are an important ecological infrastructure investment that needs to be captured within a wider policy framework, the benefits of which extend beyond the mitigation of a single negative externality generated by land use practices, such as nutrient loss, and contribute to a multifunctional landscape.     

Public preferences for controlling an invasive species in public and private spaces

Discrete choice experiments have been used in this case study to assess community benefits for the control of red imported fire ants, an aggressive ant species that were introduced by accident in 2001 to Brisbane, Australia. This invasive species could have substantial impacts on agricultural production, biodiversity, ecosystem services, infrastructure and communities. Values for avoiding impacts on three particular land uses have been assessed in this study with discrete choice experiments. The results indicated that on a per hectare basis, the value estimates to avoid infestation in public areas (schools and parks), were much higher than for private areas (housing) or natural bushland areas (protected native vegetation). There were high levels of support for eradication rather than containment strategies, despite the additional costs involved. The use of both random parameters logit and latent class models demonstrates that there is a significant heterogeneity in preferences and values for controlling or eradicating the invasive species, indicating that it may be challenging to gain and maintain political support for management options, particularly if these involve large costs or inconvenience to households.     

Technology change as a policy response to promote changes in land management for environmental benefits

A previous study developed a framework for choosing among groups of policy mechanisms for encouraging environmentally beneficial land-use change. The framework highlights that these choices should depend on the relative levels of private (or internal) net benefits, and public (or external) net benefits. Incentive-based mechanisms (polluter-pays and/or beneficiary-pays) and extension need to be targeted carefully to appropriate projects—where private net benefits are close to zero, and/or public net benefits are more extremely positive or negative. This article focuses on policy mechanisms that alter the net benefits of changing land management, including R&D to develop new technologies, and training to improve the skill of landholders at using existing technologies. These policy options are now treated more comprehensively within the public benefits: private benefits framework. Benefits of technology-change projects can include reductions in the opportunity cost of compliance with environmental programs, increases in the public benefits of a particular type of land-use change, or improvements in private net benefits, resulting in public benefits through greater or more rapid adoption by private landholders. From an environmental management perspective, technology development is most relevant where public net benefits of land use change are positive and private net benefits are negative, but not highly negative. There is a set of projects for which technology change is the only viable alternative to no action, highlighting the importance of technology change in these cases.