Involvement: a novel approach for understanding responses to nutrient budgeting

Abstract

The New Zealand dairy industry has responded to concerns about the impact of dairying on the environment by implementing a range of voluntary policy initiatives. One initiative emphasises that all dairy farmers have systems to manage nutrient inputs and outputs, with the completion of a nutrient budget as a measure of achievement. The research outlined in this paper was designed to explore the effort farmers put into responding to the policy in order to determine their involvement in nutrient budgets. Qualitative interviews with 20 dairy farmers were undertaken. The results suggest that involvement with the current policy is low. Further work is required to determine whether and how involvement could be increased to help industry and policy makers with the next stage of this initiative. This research demonstrates that understanding how involved farmers are in an issue is one way of highlighting possible policy adoption drivers and barriers during the implementation process.

Keywords:

• environmental policy
• dairy farming
• New Zealand
• involvement
• nutrient budgets

Introduction

Environmental policy for agricultural land management in New Zealand has undergone considerable change over the last two decades. In 1991, the Resource Management Act (RMA) was developed as a cornerstone of environmental policy (Barnett & Pauling 2005). The RMA effectively devolves responsibility for environmental policy and management to local government authorities (Barnett & Pauling 2005; Valentine et al. 2007). For agricultural industries, and dairying in particular, the RMA has resulted in changes to land management in order to try and mitigate the impacts of farming (Barnett & Pauling 2005).

Dairy farming in New Zealand is a significant part of the agricultural landscape. Dairying is the largest contributor to exports, constituting approximately 25% of all New Zealand exports (Baskarana et al. 2009). In addition, dairying provides a range of employment opportunities (Tipples 2007). However, the environmental impact of dairy farming, particularly the effect of nutrients leaching from effluent or fertiliser, has become a focal point for a range of stakeholders concerned about water quality (Gourley et al. 2007; Jay 2007). In response to this pressure, the industry has developed its own environmental policy with a range of voluntary initiatives, including the Clean Streams Accord signed in 2003 by the dairy industry, represented by Fonterra, the largest dairy company in New Zealand, along with local regulatory agencies and central government authorities (Jay 2007; Valentine et al. 2007).

The Clean Streams Accord is a commitment by the industry's farmers to implement a number of key environmental goals. One of the five targets under this agreement is to ensure that all dairy farmers have systems to manage nutrient inputs and outputs. The industry has used the indicator of a nutrient budget as a measure of whether this target has been achieved. The industry believes that completion of a nutrient budget is a significant first step towards achieving the Accord target of all farms having a system in place for managing nutrient inputs and outputs (MfE 2008). To this end, the dairy industry, along with the fertiliser industry, has extensively promoted the use of nutrient budgets. In 2008, it was reported that 97% of farmers had a nutrient budget (MfE 2008).

However, there is little information available on how effective this voluntary policy approach has been. In particular, there is little information on how nutrient budgets are used by farmers, or whether farmers trust the budgets and the information contained in them. While the industry has recognised this, and indicated that it will continue to work with the fertiliser industry to help farmers implement nutrient management plans, research was required to address this information gap. The research outlined in this paper was designed to explore farmers’ involvement and response to this part of the Clean Streams Accord. This investigation involved assessing farmers’ experience of nutrient budgets to date by attempting to understand the level of interest and trust that dairy farmers currently have in nutrient budgeting and planning. Interest and trust were used as proxies for determining farmers’ involvement with, and hence response to, nutrient budgets.

Farmer use of nutrient budgets

There appears to be limited literature on farmer use of nutrient budgets. Similarly, there appears to be no research that pertains directly to farmers’ trust in nutrient budgets. In Australia, Gourley et al. (2007) concluded that nutrient budgets in the dairy industry could help improve nutrient management. However, there was little evidence, either from Australia or elsewhere, to suggest that farmers were highly involved in developing nutrient budgets, and thus were extensively using nutrient budgets to actively monitor nutrient losses and change practices in order to mitigate those losses.

A study by Goodlass et al. (2003) identified over 45 nutrient budgeting tools currently in use in Europe. They concluded that most of the nutrient budgeting tools and documentation available did not provide assistance with interpreting outputs or changes to farm management. They also argued that nutrient budgeting tools show little recognition of farmers’ needs. Gourley et al. (2007) also felt that the low priority dairy farmers generally give nutrient management, other than fertiliser applications, was a major barrier to the use of nutrient budgets at this point in time.

Involvement

Fundamental to the research outlined in this paper was the concept of involvement, which was used to explore farmers’ experiences of industry-led environmental policy and their experience with nutrient budgets in particular. A common definition of involvement is ‘the level of perceived personal importance, interest or relevance evoked by a stimulus or stimuli…’ (Verbeke & Vackier 2004: p. 159). Involvement is considered to be a motivational state. The strength of involvement is determined by the relevance of a product (or activity) to a consumer's values, goals and self-concept (Zaichkowsky 1986). Involvement has been shown to regulate the way in which people receive and process information (Heath & Douglas 1991; Salmon 1986). The level of involvement will determine the attention given to a stimulus or situation by an individual and the effort they will invest in information processing and decision making (Assael 1998; Poiesz & deBont 1995).

Low involvement with a product or issue can lead to behaviour described by Chaffee and Roser (1986: p. 376) as ‘… a direct response to situational constraints and not especially reflective of one's attitudes or knowledge’. In contrast, those who are highly involved with an issue will be prepared to devote time and effort evaluating information associated with it and will already have appropriate frames of reference (Petty et al. 1983; Heath & Douglas 1991; Rimal & Real 2005). However, those who have low involvement may notice other cues, such as the way in which information is presented (Rimal & Real 2005) and the message source (Petty et al. 1983).

Low involvement means that behaviour does not necessarily reflect attitudes or knowledge (Chaffee & Roser 1986). Awareness of an issue or problem, involvement in that issue or problem and the need to think through a problem or issue are all required for attitude formation (Priluck & Till 2004). To illustrate, in evaluating a communication campaign designed to increase recycling, Larson & Massetti-Miller (1984) found that although there was no change in recycling behaviour there were attitude changes, but only amongst those people who already recycled (i.e. those who already had high involvement).

Involvement has been used previously to predict purchase behaviour among consumers (Gabbott & Hogg 1999). In the health field there has been a long history of the use of involvement in designing communication campaigns to promote behaviour change (Aldoory 2001). Involvement is the basis for an approach, outlined by Kaine (2008), used to understand and predict adoption of technologies in agriculture. This approach has been used to understand and predict the adoption of new irrigation technology among horticulturalists (Kaine et al. 2005), pest and disease management techniques among horticulturalists (Kaine & Bewsell 2008) and once-a-day milking among dairy farmers (Bewsell et al. 2008).

This study surmised that involvement could underpin farmers’ response to industry-led environmental policy and thus have a direct influence on their response to this policy. In particular, it was assumed that the amount of time and effort a farmer puts into a decision about nutrient budgeting reflects the level of involvement in nutrient budgeting. If they put little effort into their decision making then their level of involvement was considered to be low. If they put a great deal of effort into their decision making about nutrient budgeting then their involvement was gauged to be high. This study also attempted to assess how important nutrient budgeting was to farmers, whether it held some emotional appeal, whether their interest in nutrient budgeting was continual and whether they felt it posed any risk to their farm business.

Materials and methods

Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to explore farmers’ experience of, and thus involvement in, nutrient budgets. Qualitative interviews allow the interviewer to explore the way in which an interviewee views the world. This facilitates an understanding of interviewees’ perceptions and experiences (Patton 2002). This approach was deemed the most appropriate, given the need to explore and understand the level of involvement farmers had in relation to nutrient budgets.

A series of questions on nutrient budget use was developed by the researchers. The questions were designed around themes based on the convergent interviewing technique (Dick 1998). The themes were: background and demographics; experience with nutrient budgets; assessment of the value and confidence in placed in nutrient budgets; and sources of information. We were particularly interested in whether farmers perceived nutrient budgets to be useful, whether they had confidence in the results and if this had resulted in any changes in their farm management. We also asked if farmers were interested in learning more about nutrient budgeting. A checklist of questions is available on request from the corresponding author.

AgriBase, managed by AgriQuality, was used to purchase a random selection of dairy farmer contacts across four regions—Waikato, Manawatu, Canterbury and Southland. Farmers were selected based on herd size in order to ensure that both small and large herd owners were represented. Half of the contacts within each region were classified as having fewer than 500 cows, while the remainder had over 500 cows.

The series of questions was piloted with five dairy farmers in Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand in May 2007; no changes were required. A further 15 interviews were undertaken across three different locations. A total of five interviews were undertaken in Southland, five in Manawatu and five in Waikato in June 2007. Each interview took approximately 1 hour. A total of 20 interviews (including the pilot interviews) were completed. The results include both the pilot and subsequent interviews as there were no changes to the questions.

Each interview was transcribed. The data were analysed systematically in order to determine common themes (Dick 1998). The themes identified provided details on farmers’ experiences with nutrient budgets and allowed the researchers to determine how involved they were in the process.

Results

Background information on interviewees

The average property size of the interviewees was 231 ha, with average cow numbers of 721. Property sizes ranged from a low of 94 ha to a high of 650 ha and herd size ranged from 270 to 2700 cows.

Nutrient budgets

Half of the interviewees had completed just one nutrient budget. The other half had completed between two and eight nutrient budgets. All interviewees reported having the nutrient budget completed by a fertiliser representative. One interviewee reported that they had two nutrient budgets prepared: one by a member of the dairy industry extension team and another by their fertiliser representative. The reasons for obtaining a nutrient budget varied. Reasons given by interviewees were:

1.	they had to get a nutrient budget because their milk company (i.e. Fonterra) now required them to have one (45%)
2.	they thought a nutrient budget would help them reduce fertiliser use (35%)
3.	the nutrient budget helped them demonstrate compliance with environmental requirements (25%)
4.	they wanted a fertiliser plan (20%)
5.	they wanted to check effluent loadings (10%).

Some interviewees stated more than one reason for obtaining a nutrient budget, so percentages do not add to 100.

Farmer engagement and interest in the nutrient budget development process

Farmers indicated that they had provided input data from their records for a nutrient budget so that their fertiliser representative could run the program. Most did not run the program themselves and indicated that they had little or no interest in running the program, preferring to leave that to ‘experts’. Seven interviewees (35%) reported having had some training in using the nutrient budget program Overseer®, although these interviewees still opted for their fertiliser representative to carry out the budget.

Generally, interviewees did not feel it was important for them to put a lot of time and effort into the nutrient budgeting process. One sharemilker (Southland, 460 cows) said:

If you actually sat down, I mean it's a free service so you just get them to do it, as far as that goes. If you want you can download Overseer off the computer anyway so if you really want to do it yourself you can….

All interviewees had similar accounts of the data requirements for a nutrient budget. They mentioned many of the usual data inputs for on-farm calculations, such as stocking rates, effluent area and feed bought onto the farm.

Some interviewees felt that a nutrient budget was critical in terms of working out the type and amount of fertiliser needed, i.e. the ‘when and how much’. This information is captured in the fertiliser plan. One interviewee (Canterbury, 2700 cow herd) commented:

For us once you've done the Overseer that gets filed and it's the fertiliser plan that stays on the desk all season.

However, some interviewees did indicate that the process of doing a nutrient budget had given them valuable information on the effluent area required for their herd size and situation.

Usefulness and trust in the nutrient budget

Two of the interviewees indicated they did not trust the process of developing a nutrient budget when first exposed to it, but have now seen that the results are valid. They felt this could be a barrier to other farmers using nutrient budgets. One interviewee (Waikato, 700 cow herd) had just completed his first nutrient budget; when asked about the results and whether he trusted the process, commented ‘Too early to tell’.

Farmers indicated, through statements made, that trust in nutrient budgets was low to medium, with one farmer (Manawatu, 410 cow herd) commenting ‘[I] don't totally trust it’. Another interviewee (Manawatu, 420 cow herd) commented:

They're a guide, it's not a precise thing, it's a guide to put you in the right direction to use roughly the right amount. It's not a precise tool, it's just a good guide for what you should be doing and we treat it as such.

A farmer from Southland (400 cow herd) agreed, saying:

The thing that gets me about it is there are too many theoretical figures they work on. They estimate the amount of effluent you're putting on, they estimate quite a few things like that so it's not really an exact science either.

However, in contrast, another interviewee (Waikato, 535 cow herd) felt that it depended on the information provided by the farmer, saying ‘[I] trust the output because… the information put in was right’.

Industry and local government requirements

Some of the interviewees (20%) knew a great deal about industry and local government requirements for nutrients. 30% indicated that they knew enough about the requirements to know what was needed. Another 20% indicated they did not know very much about what was required and these respondents also indicated that they did not feel the need to know more.

Information sources

Interviewees indicated that their main source of information on nutrient budgets was fertiliser representatives and other farmers: 70% of interviewees indicated they would ask their fertiliser representative for information while 30% indicated they would ask other farmers. Generally, interviewees felt there was a lot of information on nutrient budgets available. Often the problem was not the lack of information but too much information, with one interviewee (Waikato, 1000 cow herd) commenting ‘[I] don't want any more papers that come or stuff to read’.

Generally, interviewees were not very interested in learning more about nutrient budgets or nutrient requirements, preferring to leave it to the experts. Some indicated that fertiliser representatives have changed. A farmer in Waikato (1000) cow herd) said:

I think the fertiliser companies have taken a really responsible attitude towards the whole thing and they're wanting their farmers to be sustainable.

One interviewee articulated the need for independent information as well, rather than relying solely on fertiliser companies. He said that this information could also come from researchers or farm consultants who are not selling a product.

Learning about nutrient budgets

There was not a great deal of data collected on how interviewees would like to receive information on nutrient budgeting, often because interviewees indicated they did not feel the need for more information. However, workshops and information packs or information in farmers’ magazines were mentioned by some (35 and 15% respectively). One-on-one discussions with fertiliser representatives, discussion group or field day presentations, fertiliser company presentations and posters (e.g. as reminders of maximum levels) were all ways in which interviewees felt nutrient budgeting information could be provided.

Discussion

Farmers’ levels of involvement in nutrient budgets were inferred from the amount of time and effort invested in nutrient budgets, as well as their interest and knowledge of nutrient budgets (i.e. their degree of engagement in planning and activities associated with it). Little interest and effort put into nutrient budgets equalled little engagement with nutrient budgets, implying low involvement.

The major theme that emerged from interviews with farmers in this work was that their involvement level in nutrient budget development was low. Most farmers saw nutrient budgets as a regulatory requirement for dairy farmers. As a result, all interviewees had embarked on the process of having a nutrient budget completed for their property, but expressed little or no involvement in the process. Farmers were thus complying with the industry requirement for all farmers to have a nutrient budget. However, at this point, they expressed little interest in being more involved in the process or using the budget to assess possible environmental impacts, the actual aim of the policy. In short, these farmers have a nutrient budget to meet requirements and they indicated that they trusted the requirements were met because the budgets had been prepared by ‘experts’. Most farmers were more involved in fertiliser management than nutrient budgeting, as they put more time and effort into decision making on this issue than they did on nutrient budgets. This did not mean that farmers were not interested in environmental issues or the environmental impact of their farm. However, at present they have a low level of involvement with the current measure of achievement in this area: nutrient budgets.

Low involvement means that behaviour does not necessarily reflect attitudes or knowledge (Chaffee & Roser 1986; Priluck & Till 2004). However, if there is a need for farmers to use nutrient budgets more effectively—that is, a need for farmers to respond to the outcomes of their budget and change the way in which they manage parts of their farm—these results indicate that there is a need to increase the level of involvement in nutrient budgeting. Attempting to try and change the level of involvement of individuals with nutrient budgets may be difficult. The challenge for attempting to prompt greater involvement in nutrient budgeting is that individuals are not likely to be attentive to information provided due to their current low involvement levels. Kim (2003) suggests that an effect-evoking strategy, one that evokes an emotional response, may be the most effective means of prompting an individual's attention under these circumstances.

Kaine et al. (2010) suggest that reframing the issue in order to link it to a subject that is highly involving for individuals could help. One potential disadvantage to changing the level of involvement with nutrient budgeting is highlighted by Kaine et al. (2010). When individuals have high levels of involvement in both the issue the policy has been designed to address and the policy, there is potential for individuals to have favourable or unfavourable attitudes towards the regulation. This is because when the consequences of a decision have two sides (i.e. for and against) there will be a distinction between involvement and attitudes (Mittal 1995). An individual's assessment of the issue and its potential impact on them and their business will determine whether their attitude will be favourable or unfavourable. It is possible that when considering further requirements for nutrient management, farmers will assess the consequences as unfavourable to their business and decide that the cost of meeting these requirements is greater than the benefits of complying (Kaine et al. 2010). Under these circumstances, Kaine et al. (2010) believe that individuals will either choose not to comply with the requirements or comply reluctantly.

The literature on consumer products contains some strategies for promoting purchase of low-involvement products, and some may be applicable to the use of nutrient budgets. The first strategy is to promote low-involvement products in terms of minimising problems rather than maximising benefits, as consumers are looking for ‘acceptable, not optimal, products’ in low-involvement situations (Assael et al. 2007: p. 136). Another suggested strategy for attempting to increase the rate of adoption of low-involvement products is to promote trialling of the product (Assael et al. 2007). The results presented here suggest that this strategy may not be readily applicable to nutrient budgets, as farmers are already trialling the process and are not always convinced that there are identifiable benefits from having undertaken a nutrient budget.

Conclusions

The dairy industry in New Zealand is proactively responding to concerns about the impact of dairying on the environment by implementing a range of voluntary policy initiatives such as the Clean Streams Accord. This voluntary policy approach has been successful in terms of the number of dairy farmers who have completed nutrient budgets. However, this research suggests that the next part of the policy initiative, i.e. implementing nutrient management plans to ensure that all dairy farmers have systems to manage nutrient inputs and outputs rather than just fertiliser applications, could be more challenging. It appears that, until involvement increases, farmers will continue to comply with requirements without necessarily making significant changes to the way in which they manage their farms in order to reduce nutrient losses.

Although caution is required when speculating as to how farmers may respond in future, if the industry moves to the next stage and begins implementation of nutrient management plans, farmers may not comply. Successfully increasing the level of involvement in nutrient budgeting could help, although there are inherent problems in this approach. Policy efforts will need to be carefully managed to ensure that farmers view further nutrient loss requirements favourably.

This research used the concept of involvement as a novel approach to a better understanding of possible farmer responses to environmental policy. It was not within the scope of this study to investigate how involvement and response to environmental policy could be increased, and further study is needed to determine this.

Acknowledgements

This work was conducted under the Pastoral Research Programme Environment (C10X0603), which is jointly funded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, DairyNZ, Fonterra and Meat & Wool New Zealand. We thank Geoff Kaine and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper.