Over the fence: understanding what people do and how they might change

Abstract

Landholders in New Zealand hill country are being challenged in the future to provide the resource for increasing agricultural productivity while balancing social and environmental demands. This will lead to an increasingly complex ecosystem which challenges simple approaches to achieving change on farm. This paper discusses principles such as degree of complexity, systems thinking in farming systems, knowledge, and barriers to decision making and adoption in relation to agricultural production systems. These concepts are often little considered or understood where there is an expectation of uptake of new technologies or an increased rate of practice change. Better understanding and consideration of these concepts could help in the development and design of more effective extension programmes. Keywords: behaviour change, adoption, extension, farming systems, complexity, barriers, knowledge

Opportunities for Improving Herbicide Resistance Management Strategies across New Zealand’s Arable Sector

“…Blackstock et al [51] (p. 5637), for instance, note in relation to agricultural pollution that "no single approach or strategy for influencing farmers' behaviour to manage diffuse pollution in the context of climate change is likely to be sufficient". Similar arguments have been made about extension programmes in general, often with reference to multiple communication avenues and practice change components needed to improve programme efficacy [33,34,52,53]. As outlined above, researchers have already refined some of these insights in relation to weed and HR management.…”