Building knowledge systems for sustainable agriculture: supporting ...

Building knowledge systems for sustainable agriculture: supporting private advisors to adequately address sustainable farm management in regular service contacts Laurens Klerkx* and Jolanda Jansen Communication and Innovation Studies, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands

Advisory service provisioning on sustainability issues such as environmental care and food safety is considered suboptimal in privatized extension systems, which comprise a diverse set of private advisors. Apart from funding dedicated ‘public good’ projects, government also relies on these advisors to address sustainability issues in their regular service contacts with farmers. Policy measures have hence been proposed to stimulate farmer demand for such sustainable farm management (SFM) advice (pull measures) and to build capacity among advisors (push measures). This paper assesses two interventions, in nutrient management and mastitis prevention, that integrate pull measures (awareness building and economic incentives) and push measures (promoting facilitative advisory styles and optimizing knowledge system linkages) to stimulate advisory service provisioning on SFM. Results indicate that effectiveness appears to depend on an adequate mix of, and balance between, push and pull measures. Awareness building is a prerequisite to creating demand for such services and appears more important than economic incentives. However, awareness is not built by the interventions alone; indeed, a lack of awareness may not be the main problem: the broader institutional context may not be conducive to a proactive approach to addressing SFM if regulatory frameworks are unclear and inconsistent. The main conclusion is that, despite interventions having an impact, it is uncertain whether the demand for, and supply of, SFM advice will be sustained after interventions are withdrawn. Keywords: advisors; environmental protection; food safety; mastitis; nutrient management; public goods; sustainable farm management

Introduction Sustainable agriculture, which encompasses elements such as maintaining the integrity of entire ecosystems, the continuing supply of natural resources, and the coherence and well-being of communities in rural areas, needs to be supported by adequate knowledge systems (Bawden, 2007). To deal with overarching sustainability concerns such as food security, food safety, ecosystem services, landscape and social equity, these knowledge systems should embrace a holistic perspective that recognizes complexity, that is, the interrelations between several system

components and the emergent properties that result from their interaction (Bawden, 2007). Among science, farmers and other stakeholders, one component of such knowledge systems is the advisory subsystem, in agriculture commonly known as ‘agricultural extension’. Its goal is to support farmers in their overall farm management, which covers several more specific topics, such as soil management, pest management and also financial management. Originally, agricultural extension had a strongly supply-driven character employing a transfer-oftechnology (TOT) approach, in which farmers were seen as passive recipients of information that they

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY 8(3) 2010 PAGES 148–163, doi:10.3763/ijas.2009.0457 # 2010 Earthscan. ISSN: 1473-5903 (print), 1747-762X (online). www.earthscan.co.uk/journals/ijas

Building knowledge systems for sustainable agriculture

should uniformly adopt and apply (Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004). However, the TOT approach became increasingly critiqued because it ignored the highly interactive and locally specific nature of knowledge construction. It is now recognized that, to achieve more sustainable agricultural practice, advisors and farmers, as well as other stakeholders, need to engage in a process of joint experiential learning to which all parties equally contribute knowledge (Millar and Curtis, 1999; Pretty and Buck, 2002; Eshuis and Stuiver, 2005; Schneider et al., 2009). In addition to the changing ideas on the nature of advisory work, organizational changes have affected agricultural extension systems. Whereas previously there was a single supply-driven public extension service through which the state provided advisory services free of charge, a demand-driven pluralistic extension system has now emerged in which several kinds of advisors are active and in which farmers themselves pay – at least partially – for advisory services. As a result of this shift, farmers are better placed to steer advisory service provisioning to fit their needs (Garforth et al., 2003). This has influenced the way in which sustainability concerns are addressed. Straightforward technical advice to solve problems relating to production is generally satisfactorily provided through such advisory services. However, provision of integrated sustainable farm management (henceforth abbreviated as SFM) advice to support learning relating to ‘public goods’ such as environmental care is insufficient (Laurent et al., 2006; Botha et al., 2008). Private demand for advisory services related to such public goods is generally low, because the investment does not always yield immediate economic returns (Nagel and Von der Heiden, 2004; Bruges and Smith, 2008). Furthermore, it is hard for farmers to formulate a clear demand because the complexity of SFM requires a balance between the technical, societal, environmental and entrepreneurial elements of agricultural production (Laurent et al., 2006). It is consequently argued that government has to remain responsible for ‘public good extension’ related to stimulating SFM (Rivera and Alex, 2004) as part of a broader policy mix including, for example, subsidies, regulations and tax incentives (Van Woerkum, 1990; Valentine et al., 2007; Parker et al., 2009). A common way for government to do this is by contracting private advisors for special public good projects (Garforth et al., 2003; Nagel and Von der Heiden, 2004). But outside the context of special public good projects, government also increasingly relies on private advisors to address

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SFM within their regular advisory service contacts with farmers (Botha et al., 2008). In addition to ‘specialized’ independent advisors, such as agronomists (Ingram, 2008a), this involves advisors that embed advice within a broader palette of goods or services (henceforth called ‘embedded advisors’). The latter are, for example, agricultural input providers (selling feed, pesticides and fertilizers) and veterinarians (providing general animal health advice alongside disease treatment). These embedded advisors are widely used by farmers, often more than specialized independent advisors (Wolf et al., 2001; Solano et al., 2003). Although private advisors’ regular advisory contacts may play an important role in establishing more sustainable agricultural practices, there are several constraints in integrally incorporating attention to SFM in such contacts. These relate, for example, to advisor competencies, and the room for addressing SFM in a commercial, demand-driven, farmer–advisor relationship (Ingram and Morris, 2007; Mee, 2007; Botha et al., 2008; Ingram, 2008a,b). Studies by these authors indicate that policy measures such as advisor capacity-building support and awareness building among farmers to stimulate demand for SFM advice are needed. The aim of this paper is to describe and reflect upon such policy measures. The paper continues with a review of insights on addressing SFM through private advisors. This is followed by an analysis of two interventions in the Netherlands, which aimed to tackle constraints advisors experience as regards SFM advice, in the case of, respectively, nutrient management and mastitis prevention.

Theoretical background Role of the advisor in supporting learning on SFM topics Dealing with the complexities of cause and effect in farming systems, and learning to apply practices to a whole farming system, requires strong interaction between advisor and farmer (Leeuwis, 2000; Ingram and Morris, 2007). Regular advisor–farmer contacts are a potentially powerful way to achieve this because of (a) the high frequency of service contacts between farmers and advisors, (b) the familiarity with each other’s context, personal characteristics, preferences, beliefs, aspirations and competencies that builds up over the years, and (c) the relationship of trust that develops (Van den Ban and Hawkins, 1996; Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004; Sligo and Massey, 2007). This interaction can be shaped in several ways, depending on the positions farmer and

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advisor take in the process of knowledge construction (Bergea et al., 2008; Ingram, 2008a), which codetermines the effectiveness of SFM advice. Here, the distinction between information and knowledge is relevant (Wolf et al., 2001): whereas knowledge is context-specific and often tacit, information is decontextualized and generalized knowledge that is made explicit. Information can be exchanged in different forms, but meaning is constructed only in interaction with the existing knowledge base of the recipient. Knowledge construction is hence not merely a transfer of information as a result of the advisor’s problem diagnosis (‘providing a recipe’), but a dialogue in which information is exchanged between farmer and advisor with the purpose of joint knowledge creation, so actually co-shaping the advice (‘jointly creating a therapy’). In this process, factors such as beliefs, worldviews, interests, emotions and uncertainties should be questioned and discussed as they co-determine a person’s attitude towards change (Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004; Bawden, 2007; Nettle and Paine, 2009). As Koutsouris (2008, p. 205) put it, ‘the shift from conventional farming to more sustainable forms of agriculture concerns a systemic change and thus involves . . . a profound change in assumptions and strategies underlying subsequent actions’. Instead of being mere technical experts, prescribing solutions, advisors must take on the role of coach, sparring partner and facilitator from a reflexive and adaptive position (Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004; Nettle and Paine, 2009). Constraints in shaping a facilitative advisory relationship Despite the potentially important contribution advisors can make to learning on more sustainable forms of agriculture by adopting a facilitative role (Crawford et al., 2007; Valentine et al., 2007; Ingram 2008a; Koutsouris, 2008), a number of problems emerge in relation to shaping this role in regular farmer – advisor service contacts. Firstly, advisors may lack the right attitude and competencies to proactively provide advice on SFM and shape a facilitative role (Koutsouris, 2008). Farmer–advisor interactions may still have a supplydriven, TOT orientation, despite the fact that the advisory system is demand driven in the economic sense (because farmers pay for the service). Ingram (2008a) found that advisors may take a ‘prescriptive expert’ role, in which they prescribe solutions (i.e. transfer information) that are either accepted or rejected by farmers. For example, veterinarians (in

their role as embedded advisors) see their main task as providing curative services rather than preventive advice, and may lack social skills (i.e. speaking the same ‘language’ as clients, patience and diplomacy) as opposed to technical skills (Cannas da Silva et al., 2006; Mee, 2007; Noordhuizen et al., 2008). Also, concerns are voiced that embedded advisors may take a prescriptive expert role to support sales of their other services and goods (Wolf, 1995; Bentley et al., 2003; Ingram, 2008a), for example, advising the use of more pesticides instead of having more integrated pest control measures to reduce pesticide use. The type of expert role adopted may, however, result not only from the attitude of advisors, but also from the attitude and expectations of farmers as clients. Advisors may take a ‘reactive expert’ role in which they only respond to a clear request for certain information by the farmer (Ingram, 2008a). A second problem is thus that, although they have the right attitude and competencies, advisors may be afraid that in strongly demand-driven advisor–client relationships they will lose their credibility if they provide advice that farmers have not asked for. Farmers may demand straightforward technical advice as a recipe to solve a problem, and not to address deeper underlying positions and assumptions. This could imply that a farmer might discontinue the relationship with an advisor if the advisor addressed SFM topics when not asked to do so (Mee, 2007; Ingram, 2008a). Sometimes advisors lack confidence in their ability to enter into a meaningful dialogue about SFM (Mee, 2007), or perceive a loyalty dilemma between private good (what the farmer demands and pays for) and public good (issues of broader importance for society as a whole) (Garforth et al., 2003). Advisors thus sometimes prefer to work within what Ingram (2008a) calls their ‘comfort zone’. This means that, despite having sufficient knowledge on the broader sustainability dimensions of the problem, they do not challenge the farmer to look more fundamentally at the issue with which they are dealing and thereby support their learning process. They thus do not offer public good advice proactively (Bruges and Smith, 2008), and advice is limited to helping farmers comply with minimum legislative requirements, which Botha et al. (2008) have called operating in ‘catch-up mode’. Thirdly, advisors may be well aware of the importance of SFM topics, and their role in addressing these, and try to keep up to date with the latest insights from research on environmental protection and food safety measures (Ingram and Morris, 2007; Botha



et al., 2008). However, this is not an easy task because of the abundance of sources, and sometimes integrating recent research findings into the farmer community is not fully appreciated; conversely, advisors have little opportunity to influence research priorities. Proposed policy measures to resolve suboptimal SFM advisory service provisioning In view of the constraints in shaping an effective farmer –advisor relationship outlined above, a number of policy measures have been proposed to tackle the suboptimal provisioning of SFM advice by private advisors through regular service contacts. They include both pull and push measures, respectively oriented towards the demand and supply side of the market for advisory services. Pull measures include (Botha et al., 2008): † raising farmer awareness about the importance of SFM issues, to stimulate demand for services that address these issues; † a specific financial incentive for farmers to create an economic demand for SFM advice. Push measures include (Mee, 2007; Ingram and Morris, 2007; Botha et al., 2008): † support for advisors in developing social skills and best practice exchange among advisors regarding how to convey SFM messages in an interactive facilitative way; † improving linkages between research and practice, and in general a more coordinated research and extension system in support of SFM advice. Although these measures seem logical in view of the constraints they are designed to relieve, it remains an open question as to how to effectively shape interventions incorporating these measures to ‘manipulate’ regular farmer –advisor interaction in favour of SFM (Botha et al., 2008; Ingram, 2008a).

Aims and methods of the study Goal of the study and case selection This study aims to contribute to the knowledge on interventions to support SFM advice provisioning by private advisors by describing two interventions that integrate the above-mentioned pull and push measures, with the objective of gaining insight into ways to combine such push and pull measures. The two cases

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are interesting because they were designed to optimize supply (push) and demand (pull) in the market for advisory services in favour of public goods such as environmental care and food safety. However, despite having similar goals, they present different combinations of push and pull measures. The cases deal with the Nutrient Management Support Service (NMSS), which targets the entire Dutch agricultural sector, and the Dutch Udder Health Centre (DUHC), which targets the Dutch dairy farming sector. Following the policy measures outlined in the previous section, the study aims to comparatively describe and assess experiences at NMSS and DUHC. Background to the cases: the public good issues at stake and the interventions Nutrient management Nutrient management surfaced as a public interest theme in the 1980s after it became clear that the Dutch agricultural policy of ever-increasing production, promoted by public extension since the 1950s, was having detrimental effects on the environment. Intensive animal production industries, relying on imported feed, created a manure surplus that resulted in excessive nitrate and phosphorous emissions to the environment, affecting air quality, and surface water and groundwater quality. Since 1984, the reduction of nutrient emissions has been a principal policy concern of the Ministry of Agriculture (LNV), and in 1988 LNV introduced the Nutrient Management Administration System (known as MINAS) as a regulating mechanism (RIVM, 2002). MINAS can be conceptualized as a bookkeeping system that records nutrient flows on the farm. The quantity of certain nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium – that enter the farm in manure, fertilizer and feed is compared with the quantity leaving the farm as products or residues. By means of a calculation, the quantities of nutrients remaining in the farming system and those emitted into the environment can be determined. Farmers had to pay a fine if their nutrient balance showed a level of nutrient emission in excess of the norm. Even before its launch in 1988, MINAS was the subject of contentious debate. Farmers did not share the ideas upon which the system was based, and the system was perceived as a showcase of vagueness and inconsistency (RIVM, 2002). The policy goal of MINAS was not, however, to collect fines, but rather to encourage farmers to improve their nutrient management so that emission excesses would decrease and fines would not have to be paid at all (RIVM, 2002).


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From the policy viewpoint, MINAS was intended to serve both public interests (better groundwater quality) and private interests (cost savings through better nutrient management). MINAS set the goals and in the main left implementation to the farmer. The MINAS system collapsed towards the end of 2003 when the European court decided that it was not in line with European nitrate regulations. Mastitis Mastitis (udder inflammation) is considered as one of the main health problems in dairy production internationally (LeBlanc et al., 2006). Besides economic losses to the farmer (e.g. reduced number of productive cows and treatment costs), broader concerns such as food safety, animal welfare and (excessive) antibiotic usage are reasons to control mastitis (Huijps et al., 2008). Excessive antibiotic use in animal farming is increasingly seen as a threat to public health as it may give rise to the emergence of multiple resistant bacteria (Van Rijen et al., 2008) and may affect citizens’ perceptions of naturalness of dairy production systems, which is key to societal acceptance (Boogaard et al., 2008). Food safety is a number-one priority of the dairy industry to avoid food scares (Sischo, 2006). Consequently, mastitis prevention is relevant for society, the dairy industry and farmers. There are two types of mastitis: (1) a clinical form, in which the cow has visibly abnormal milk and/or udder and (2) a subclinical form, in which the milk and/or udder, are not visibly abnormal, but the cow has an elevated level of somatic cells in the milk, indicating infection (.250,000 cells/ml for cows and .150,000 cells/ml for heifers). The current Dutch system to control mastitis is based only on subclinical mastitis. Every bulk tank of milk that leaves the farm is sampled. If the geometric mean of the bulk milk somatic cell count (BMSCC) is more than 400,000 cells/ml for three subsequent months, farmers have to pay a fine in the form of a reduction in their milk price. If the BMSCC is very high, or high for a longer period, the dairy processing plant may decide to stop collecting milk from this farm. In view of these regulations, it is obvious that one individual cow with subclinical mastitis is not likely to incur a fine. It is only in the event of severe mastitis problems in the whole herd for more than three months that the farmer may have to pay a fine. For clinical mastitis there is no such regulation. Farmers do not incur fines for their number of clinical mastitis cases. Their most important indirect penalty is the fact that

they have to treat cows with antibiotics and that they cannot milk the cows; this can become quite costly if several cases occur. The interventions In order to advance learning on the topic of nutrient management, the Dutch government funded the so-called nitrate projects (Geerling-Eiff et al., 2004), involving research projects on more efficient and effective nutrient management strategies, collaborating with pilot farms testing these strategies in practice. In these collaborative research projects and pilot farm networks, care was taken to include the farmer’s own experimentation, collaborative enquiry and knowledge co-production with researchers (Eshuis and Stuiver, 2005). Given the importance of nutrient management for Dutch agri-environmental policy, the considerable sum of E68 million was spent on these nitrate projects. NMSS was intended to ‘out-scale’ findings from these pilot farm networks to the broader audience of all farmers that needed to comply with MINAS. DUHC reflects the concern of the dairy industry as a whole on mastitis prevention, as it was set up jointly by the Dutch Dairy Organisation, the Dairy Commodity Board and the Dutch Farmers’ Organisation. DUHC has been carrying out a national intervention programme since 2005 (to conclude in 2010) to decrease mastitis by 10 per cent. The programme includes both fundamental research on mastitis and practical intervention strategies to reach farmers, such as applied farm-specific research and extension efforts. Both NMSS and DUHC were based on the premise that advisory service provision was supportive of the mix of policy instruments to address SFM, alongside control mechanisms such as MINAS and BMSCC, and fines in the case of non-compliance. In both cases, it was initially believed that it was a lack of knowledge that caused farmers’ non-compliance with MINAS and BMSCC norms. Both NMSS and DUHC aimed to build linkages between several research projects, pilot farm projects and advisors, acting as a ‘knowledge system broker’. Because a public extension service no longer existed in The Netherlands after a privatization wave in the 1990s, NMSS and DUHC needed to rely on private advisors. Both NMSS and DUHC had the objective of mobilizing private advisors towards more integrally addressing public good issues using their ongoing advisory relationships with farmers. On the basis of a round of consultations among advisors, it was decided that NMSS needed to



target embedded as well as specialized advisors. Advisors in all agricultural subsectors (both crop and animal production) linked to farm nutrient management were considered, such as independent agronomists and accountants, and also advisors from feed companies. The latter can be seen as particularly important because of the large nutrient surplus that resulted mainly from the previously mentioned fact that Dutch animal husbandry relies heavily on imported feed such as soy. DUHC targets the dairy sector, using veterinarians as the principal embedded advisor to reach farmers about mastitis. This choice was made because a baseline survey (Jansen et al., 2004) indicated that the veterinarian was regarded as the most reliable and most used source by farmers on cattle health information. In both NMSS and DUHC, advisors were engaged by means of directly informing all specialized and embedded advisors (operating individually or in advisory firms) about the why and how of the interventions, and received direct financial benefits (the opportunity to offer farmers subsidized advice) or in-kind benefits (free advisory service support materials, such as fact sheets about research, modelling software and capacity building on advisory skills). Table 1 displays the different components of the measures adopted by NMSS and DUHC to promote the provision of SFM advice. Although both approaches share similar push and pull measures, a principal difference is that NMSS gave a direct financial incentive (a voucher to purchase advice) to farmers with which they could pay for advice on nutrient management, and it had a certification system to assess the quality of advice in terms of it addressing the deeper foundations of nutrient management. DUHC did not have such a direct incentive to farmers or a quality check for services. Research methods In its aim to comparatively assess the two interventions, this study draws mainly on previously documented evaluations that fully presented survey data and interview data. These individual evaluations addressed different push and pull measures, and the appropriate data for answering our research questions on the pull and push measures were analysed. The NMSS case (separately elaborated upon earlier in Klerkx et al., 2006) involves an evaluation in which one of the authors participated (De Grip et al., 2003) and a meta-evaluation (Geerling-Eiff et al., 2004) incorporating several evaluations including the aforementioned. As regards the DUHC intervention, the evaluation

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derives from both published work (Kuiper et al., 2005; Lam et al., 2007; Jansen et al., 2008a,b, 2009, 2010a,b; Steuten et al., 2009) and unpublished work (Jansen, 2006) in which one of the authors was involved. These evaluations employed various research methods. Table 2 gives an overview of the different types of data collection. Additionally, several other evaluations of NMSS were used (Oerlemans et al., 2002; Jacobs and De Wit, 2003).

Impacts of the NMSS and DUHC interventions on SFM advice provisioning In this section, we first evaluate the impacts of NMSS on SFM advice provisioning, followed by the impacts of DUHC. Impacts of the NMSS Lack of awareness and knowledge about nutrient management appeared not to be the main problem The farmers (n ¼ 148) surveyed by Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004) ranked environmental legislation (74 per cent), MINAS and the opinion of their advisor (66 per cent) as most influential on their actions regarding nutrient management. As a measure to stimulate nutrient management practices beyond legislative requirements, and to stimulate proactive broadening of knowledge on nutrient management, a web-based ‘advisory service and information product shop’ was installed. This shop displayed certified advisory services and information products, such as books, assessment tools and software, intended to stimulate in-depth learning (e.g. going beyond services such as soil sample analysis), and vouchers were provided as a E250 subsidy to purchase these advisory services and information products. However, these measures appear not to have been very influential: the voucher was used by 24,946 out of 80,812 eligible farmers, so the effectiveness of this instrument was limited. The advisory service and information product shop was not widely used either: 54 per cent of a representative sample of 1228 farmers had not used it at the time of Jacobs and De Wit’s (2003) research. The advisory service and information product shop was rated by only 16 per cent of the farmers surveyed by Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004) as an influential factor in their nutrient management practices (n ¼ 148). As regards another awareness-raising measure, the study groups, 161 of these were formed. The study by


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Table 1 | Instruments used in the different SFM advice-promoting measures in NMSS and DUHC Instruments used in measures SFM extension promoting measure

NMSS

DUHC

Awareness raising about the public good issue to create demand for SFM advice

† Study groups facilitated by farmers themselves with technical input by advisors † Advisory service and information product shop with certified advisory services and information products on nutrient management optimization † Articles in farming magazines and newsletters † Nutrient management workshops

† Study groups facilitated by veterinarians † DUHC as advisory service and information product shop with database on udder health and prevention of mastitis † Articles in farming magazines, newsletters, calendars, posters † Mass media campaigns on the use of gloves during milking and the use of a standardized treatment plan † Udder health workshops

Economic incentive to create demand for SFM advice

† Direct incentive: voucher to purchase advisory services and information products on nutrient management † Indirect incentive: helping to comply with nutrient emission norms, thus preventing fines

† Indirect incentive: decrease mastitis and therefore fewer costs and higher milk production † Indirect incentive: udder health awards † Indirect incentive: helping to comply with somatic cell count norms, thus preventing fines

Supporting advisors in executing SFM advice

† Quality control and certification system for services to be eligible for voucher funding and having a place in the advisory service and information product shop † Nutrient management decision support tools (nutrient balance calculation programmes and model simulations) based on pilot projects

† Lectures for veterinarians † Providing supporting materials for successful organization of study groups † Free-of-charge distribution of educational materials to veterinary centres and on the internet † Regular contact with pilot veterinary centres, farmers’ test panel and DUHC

Optimizing knowledge system linkages between extension and research

† (Coordinated) exchange between 9 research projects, associated pilot farms and advisors † Central advisory service and information product shop website

† (Coordinated) exchange between 23 research projects, associated veterinary centre pilots and professional education for veterinarians and farmers † Central advisory service and information product shop website

De Grip et al. (2003) revealed that, although the main thrust of the study group programme was designed beforehand, the majority of group leaders (70 per cent, n ¼ 8) and participating farmers (60 per cent, n ¼ 31) indicated that there was sufficient flexibility for adapting content to reflect the desires and questions of participants. Advisors indicated in both the De Grip et al. (2003) and Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004) studies that, although study groups stimulated the discussion on nutrient management and helped group participants to learn from each other, there were times when such activities failed to reach their full potential. Advisors indicated that this was often a

reflection of the sensitive nature of the matter, which requires a great deal of trust. Farmers would sometimes be hesitant to openly share their farm figures to allow comparisons to be made on their nutrient management practices. An important observation is that NMSS’s stimulating measures to encourage farmers to proactively acquire advice to overcome a knowledge deficiency appeared not to be the main determining factor motivating farmers to improve nutrient management. Awareness about the need to address nutrient management appeared to be already high: Jacobs and De Wit’s (2003) large baseline survey showed that 70



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Table 2 | Overview of research methods Intervention NMSS

DUHC

Semi-structured interviews

Survey questionnaire

Observations

De Grip et al. (2003)

Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004)





8 NMSS staff 3 advisors 4 policy makers 9 farmers

8 project leaders of broader nitrate projects

Random selection of 18 advisors and 39 farmers

Random selection of 43 advisors and 148 farmers

2 study group meetings, quality assessment committee meeting, advisors’ meeting, study group coordinator meeting, 2 project team meetings

Expert meeting with 12 participants

Steuten et al. (2009); Jansen et al. (2010b)

Jansen (2006, unpublished data)

Jansen et al. (2004); Lam et al. (2007); Jansen et al. (2009); Kuiper et al. (2005); Jansen et al. (2008b, 2010b)

Jansen et al. (2008a)

Jansen et al. (2008b); Blom (2007)

30 dairy farmers, 10 veterinarians

Group interviews with veterinarians of 10 veterinary centres

Random selection of 378 dairy farmers and random selection of 374 dairy farmers

Random selection of 93 veterinarians

4 workshops with dairy farmers, 2 workshops with veterinarians, 2 workshops with both farmers and veterinarians

per cent of farmers were confident that they were complying with the MINAS norms, and 75 per cent claimed to have acquired sufficient knowledge on nutrient management (n ¼ 1228) before NMSS started. Of course, what exactly comprises sufficient knowledge is an arbitrary conclusion, but it can be assumed that it was sufficient to apply those practices needed to comply with norms. So, it appeared that it was a lack of policy consistency and clarity, rather than a knowledge deficiency, that discouraged farmers from taking action on the topic of nutrient management, with the consequent low level of policy acceptance (Geerling-Eiff et al., 2004), because they were uncertain whether the application of certain nutrient management strategies would be acceptable. Because of the policy controversy, the association of NMSS with government policy influenced its credibility, as the following quote from a farmer illustrates: NMSS in my view is a bunch of civil servants that have come up with something to keep themselves

busy: they have a budget and they issue vouchers and they try to teach farmers about nutrient management.

Nevertheless, for those that made use of NMSS facilities and related nitrate projects, the increased focus on nutrient management has been useful. Of the 148 farmers surveyed by Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004), 53 per cent made use of NMSS and related nitrate projects, and 31 per cent of these farmers (n ¼ 78) indicated that acquiring knowledge with the assistance of advisory services and information products helped them to better understand the environmental importance of nutrient management. Also, of the surveyed advisors, 69 per cent stated that they had fully contributed to increased awareness on the environmental importance of nutrient management in the context of NMSS and the broader nitrate projects, and 18 per cent that they had partly contributed (n ¼ 41).


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Both direct and indirect economic incentives appeared to a limited extent effective in creating demand for nutrient management advice As mentioned earlier, a central pillar of NMSS was the advisory service and information product shop, and the voucher an incentive to use it. However, as stated in the previous section, the voucher was used by only about one-third of eligible farmers. Also, rather than stimulating demand, the voucher stimulated supply: as De Grip et al. (2003) found in their interviews (n ¼ 3) and survey (n ¼ 18) among advisors, advisors were motivated by this financial incentive and tried to frame regular service provision as being eligible for voucher funding (so that it would pass the selection committee). Furthermore, they actively informed their clients that the voucher could be spent with them, with the consequence that most vouchers were spent within existing relationships with trusted and familiar service providers. Jacobs and De Wit’s (2003) survey showed that 72 per cent of the farmers who applied for the voucher (n ¼ 1228) spent it within established relationships. Despite the voucher not having the intended direct effect of motivating farmers to act to inform themselves on nutrient management, its indirect effect of spurring advisors to act can be seen as a significant achievement. Several earlier studies found that the service provisioning network surrounding farmers (including specialized consultants, such as agronomists, and embedded advisors such as accountants, feed advisors and veterinarians) did little to encourage farmers to take nutrient management seriously (Ketelaars and Leeuwis, 2002; Oerlemans et al., 2002). In this regard, the following response of a farmer to a question on the usefulness of the vouchers is telling: Through the vouchers, you are encouraged to gather knowledge in one way or another, so that you actually do learn about fertilization of your soils and what is the best way to do that. The indirect incentive was that complying with the norms prevented fines having to be paid, thus saving money. However, this incentive was not very effective because of the previously mentioned uncertainty about the actual norms against which nutrient management performance would be measured. Nonetheless, the surveyed advisors who indicated that awareness was raised due to the intervention (87 per cent, n ¼ 42) noted that it was nevertheless positive that participating farmers came to see the advantage of nutrient management as a cost-saving strategy

that could be integrated into overall farm management, and not only as a regulatory mechanism (Geerling-Eiff et al., 2004). The quality system did not adequately support advisors in providing better nutrient management advice The Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004) survey among advisors (n ¼ 41) indicated that these have assumed roles that correspond to prescriptive expert and facilitative expert roles. Seventy per cent of the advisors indicated that they acted as an informing expert, that is, trying to transfer as much information as possible to the farmer, and 60 per cent of the advisors indicated that they acted as a confronting expert creating awareness among those unaware of nutrient management. Fortyseven per cent of advisors acted as a prescribing expert in the sense of giving information but leaving the farmer to decide what to do with it. As regards facilitative roles, 70 per cent of the advisors indicated that they took a supportive role by complementing farmers’ own ideas with their advice, and 65 per cent of the advisors indicated that they took a catalyst role by stimulating farmers to look themselves for solutions. Finally, 21 per cent of the advisors allowed farmers to air their discontent about the nutrient management administration system. Advisors indicated that they mixed several roles, depending on the farmer’s learning process, but advisors ranked the supportive role as most ideal (74 per cent, n ¼ 41). They saw it as a major flaw that NMSS was a policyinduced, top-down intervention, but indicated that in their contacts they aimed to come to a good fit with the needs of their clients. In this respect, Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004) noted a paradox: although the ambition of NMSS was to fit nutrient management into a holistic view of farm management and to help advisors support this, farmers indicated that they mostly appreciated advice on concrete technical measures at an operational level. Farmer demand thus sometimes induced a reactive expert role, as the following quote from a farmer illustrates: I haven’t read a lot about it, and a lot of information is coming at you from which you have to select, so you think ‘information on nutrients, that is well provided for by [names advisory service companies]’. As regards this ambition to inculcate a holistic view, one of the premises of NMSS was that advisory service provision would more proactively consider nutrient management. To achieve this goal, a



committee assessed the quality of advisory services and information products. It was intended that these should help enlarge and develop knowledge on the subject, and go beyond the catch-up mode of just applying recipe-like prescriptions from advisors so as to comply with the minimum legislative requirements. However, as stated above, advisors indicated that they did not have to adapt their services much to make it pass the quality assessment; this suggests that they already were adequate and enabling more in-depth learning. However, a major criticism on the part of some advisors was that the assessment was too permissive and certified services that did not incorporate up-to-date information and had insufficient quality to stimulate in-depth learning (Geerling-Eiff et al., 2004). Hence, some of the advisors surveyed suggested that specialized nutrient management consultants should be employed in a separate public good project, instead of trying to incorporate this within regular service provision. To help advisors improve their advice, from the broader nitrate projects several (computer model based) management tools were made available to get a better insight into the outcomes of different nutrient management strategies. Use of these management tools was evaluated as useful by about half of the advisor respondents in the survey by Geerling-Eiff et al. (43 per cent, n ¼ 48). However, the tools were considered to be user unfriendly as they were not easy to use as regards data entry and interpreting model outcomes. Furthermore, they were sometimes considered as ‘black-box’ models, which gave no deeper insights into the underlying bio-physical processes that influence nutrient flows. Durable linkages between different nitrate projects did not materialize Another goal of the NMSS initiative was to stimulate interaction among different nitrate projects and farming practice, so as to out-scale these results to all farmers. Of the advisors surveyed by Geerling-Eiff et al. (2004), 54 per cent (n ¼ 41) were satisfied about the interaction among the different projects and 28 per cent were neutral. This was partly because people had double functions, as both project leader on a pilot project and advisor, thus providing a direct link between research and extension. Some specialized advisors stated that they also made linkages with other intermediaries such as embedded advisors, but network formation between projects, specialized advisors and embedded advisors was not actively promoted. Those that were dissatisfied (18 per cent)

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stated that projects were ‘islands’, and that the knowledge gathered in specific pilots remained confined to those directly involved and very interested proactive ‘knowledge seekers’. This was due to projects sometimes not disclosing results, or projects disclosing results that others regarded as irrelevant (e.g. results from an organic farming pilot were not accepted by conventional farming projects). The limited lifetime of the NMSS project and its pre-defined goals based on government policy, as well as its over-focus on technical knowledge exchange as a solution to nutrient management instead of considering wider solutions, also hindered the set-up of durable relationships between knowledge system actors (i.e. projects, advisors, agri-industry, farmers). However, the success of farmer-facilitated study groups has led to more permanent linkage building in the dairy farming sector (see Klerkx and Leeuwis, 2009). Impacts of the DUHC Mastitis awareness exists, but adequate follow-up by advisors is still lacking Most of the DUHC activities focused on raising farmer awareness as regards the importance of reducing mastitis incidence, in order to stimulate proactive demand for advice. However, similar to the NMSS project, farmers’ awareness did not seem to be the main problem. A baseline survey before the start of the DUHC project showed that 92 per cent of the farmers already wanted to decrease mastitis on their farms, 58 per cent of the respondents worried about mastitis and 60 per cent had changed some of their management practices because of udder health problems in previous years (Jansen et al., 2004). In addition, 79 per cent of the farmers were interested in the prevention of mastitis. Therefore, farmers already seemed to be aware of mastitis as an important issue. However, only 38 per cent of the respondents agreed that they should do more about mastitis prevention; this indicates that most farmers were confident that they were already doing enough. Although most farmers perceive mastitis as a serious problem, it appears that it will be difficult to make improvements as only 32 per cent of the farmers perceived that they had enough knowledge to prevent mastitis problems. Within the advisory service and information product acquisition strategies of these farmers, regular advice from veterinarians (96 per cent), farm magazine articles (93 per cent), the Animal Health Service (81 per cent), fellow farmers


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(72 per cent) and suppliers (62 per cent) were the top five sources from which farmers obtained more information about mastitis before the start of the DUHC project (Jansen et al., 2004; Kuiper et al., 2005). As a result of this baseline survey, DUHC was established both as an information product shop (but different from NMSS in that it only acted as a database for written material and ICT-based tools, and did not display advisory services) and as a knowledge system broker. Being the most used information source about udder health, DUHC focused on veterinarians as the main communication channel to reach farmers, by mobilizing veterinarians to organize farmer study groups to further increase farmers’ awareness and to provide practical and effective solutions for mastitis problems. These study groups were effective in decreasing the average BMSCC to 170,000 cells/ml (compared to 200,000 cells/ml for the control group) (Lam et al., 2007). Although these study groups were quite successful and highly appreciated by both farmers and veterinarians, only 14 per cent of all Dutch dairy farmers participated in these groups. Veterinarians complained that the farmers who really needed the study groups because of udder health problems did not participate (Jansen, 2006, unpublished data). As the study by Jansen et al. (2010b) showed, similar to observations in the NMSS case, confidentiality concerns relating to disclosure of mastitis data prevented farmers from joining a study group. Therefore, DUHC looked for different methods to create farmer demand for advisory services and information products. To encourage farmers to approach their veterinarian, all 22,000 dairy farmers received a standardized treatment plan for mastitis, which they could fill in together with their veterinarian. However, evaluation of this strategy showed that farmers did not know what to do with these forms, and veterinarians did not proactively ask for them. It was noticed, though, that direct communication efforts by DUHC, such as magazine articles, created awareness and hence created demand from farmers for advice from their veterinarians. Hence, different kinds of communication channels appeared to be equally important, despite veterinarians being targeted initially as the default channel. The survey by Jansen et al. (2008b, 2010a) showed that 91 per cent of the farmers were familiar with DUHC, most of them via farm magazines (67.6 per cent), veterinarians (61.4 per cent), the DUHC website (21.8 per cent) and colleagues (8.8 per cent). Another way used to create awareness on mastitis and stimulate demand for advisory services was the

distribution of a practical guide on udder health (Hulsen and Lam, 2006). Even though all Dutch dairy farmers received this book free of charge via their dairy company, 57 per cent were familiar with the book and 43 per cent were not familiar with it when asked during a survey in 2007 (Jansen et al., 2008b, 2010a). It seems that this kind of mailing has little potential to create awareness and demand for SFM advice if there is a lack of follow-up by advisors (Jansen, 2006, unpublished data); this indicates that advisory services and information products should reinforce each other. Negative incentives seem more effective than positive incentives DUHC did not employ direct financial incentives to stimulate demand for mastitis prevention advice, such as the vouchers in the NMSS case. An exception was the Dutch udder health awards, but these merely acted as a token of appreciation for five farmers who most successfully dealt with maintaining udder health. The most important indirect and positive incentive for farmers to address udder health is the decrease in mastitis incidence, as it costs on average E210 per case (Huijps et al., 2008). Research by Jansen et al. (2004) showed that 95 per cent of farmers perceived mastitis as a costly disease, and 69 per cent of farmers worry about the cost of mastitis. However, when farmers were asked about the most annoying aspects of mastitis, the cost was mentioned in third place (20 per cent), after the extra labour to treat the animal (24 per cent) and the uncertainty about a cow’s recovery (31 per cent). Consequently, the direct costs do not seem to be an important concern for farmers. This is supported by Valeeva et al.’s (2007) research showing that farmers do not perceive the cost of mastitis as the main problem resulting from the condition. Therefore, it can be suggested that these indirect incentives do not play a major role either. In this sense it is interesting to note that sometimes farmers disregard the losses that they incur as a result of mastitis, but do complain about the costs of veterinary treatment and preventive advice. A veterinarian remarks in this regard: In the context of DUHC we had this meeting in which we tried to motivate farmers to participate. We wanted to charge E120 for three advisory meetings and a farmer indicated that was too much, while simultaneously saying that he had two cases of mastitis incidence. I calculated that



would cost him E200 to E240, and remarkably that did not motivate him to participate. The cost of advice is too high, but a mastitis incidence case is not expressed in money. Regarding the other, negative, indirect financial incentive, the fine level for BMSCC did seem to influence farmers’ behaviour, as 65 per cent would try to improve udder health if the existing fine level decreased from 400,000 cells/ml to 350,000 cells/ ml. In addition, 67 per cent of respondents would then treat mastitis cows sooner. This is supported by Valeeva et al.’s (2007) research showing that fines in relation to milk quality seem to have more impact on behavioural change than bonuses. However, lowering the fine level in the Netherlands is not an option, because European legislation on milk quality prohibits such amendments. Support materials do not fulfil their potential due to veterinaries’ role perceptions Similar to the NMSS management tools, DUHC developed free-of-charge educational materials for veterinarians to use during study group meetings (and also when giving individual advice), and veterinarians had the opportunity to attend study group facilitation workshops. In 2008, 205 veterinary centres with 17,210 clients participated in the project, representing about 78 per cent of all Dutch dairy farmers. However, participating veterinary centres differed substantially in the percentage of farmers they could motivate to participate in study groups (ranging from 5 to 95 per cent). Small veterinary centres, in particular, had more involved farmers than larger ones. In in-depth interviews, veterinarians acknowledged that some veterinarians were more enthusiastic than others, and that it was difficult to develop a standard practice to be implemented by all. Moreover, most veterinarians thought that they lacked the competence to proactively persuade farmers to join study groups (Steuten et al., 2009). Despite being intended to empower veterinarians in individual advisory encounters, most of the educational materials developed were not used by veterinarians (Jansen et al., 2008b, 2010a). The results of a survey among veterinarians indicated that they perceived the provision of udder health advice as important, but some thought that they were not so highly influential on the udder health of a farm. Only 24 per cent of the veterinarians proactively initiated a general conversation about udder health, without

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there being a direct udder health problem and a resultant request for a cure from a farmer (Jansen et al., 2008a). This is supported by Steuten et al.’s (2009) interviews, which showed that veterinarians presuppose that farmers do not want to be bothered by udder health information. In addition, some veterinarians do not regard bad farm management as a good reason to start talking about udder health: it seems that they stick to the curatively oriented prescriptive and reactive expert role that prevails in veterinarian–farmer contacts. This is illustrated by the following quote from a veterinary: I am not a missionary. Look, the farmer is my client and I am a service provider, and I provide services when the farmer wants me to, I am not going to talk to a wall. That doesn’t make sense, I get frustrated and the farmer also gets tired of it. So on those farms it is ‘you ask and we deliver’, and if the farmer wants to do something with udder health I’ll hear it.

DUHC optimizes knowledge system linkages, but synergy is still lacking DUHC’s main activities are comprised of both research and communication interventions in practice. DUHC supports research projects, ranging from veterinary medicine, cattle breeding and genetics to economics and communication science research. The planning and execution of this research and these interventions is co-supervised by a farmers’ panel and a veterinarians’ panel to create a direct linkage between scientists and practice. Several campaigns to influence farmers’ behaviour in relation to mastitis prevention measures (such as wearing protective gloves) have been developed in cooperation with suppliers of, for example, pharmaceuticals, feed and farm management systems, involving these as embedded advisors. Veterinarians have been given names of scientific experts on udder health and nutrition who can be consulted in the event of specific problems, and both farmers and veterinarians can invite these experts to give study group lectures. It was expected that, by stimulating network building among those service providers closest to farmers, veterinarians as well as other input suppliers would take over some of the DUHC work. However, although the DUHC project is not yet concluded, the advisors still depend heavily on the DUHC activities. There are only a few autonomous initiatives by veterinarians or input suppliers working on udder health.


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Discussion: effectiveness of push and pull measures in stimulating a focus on SFM in regular farmer – advisor relationships In this section, we reflect on interventions aimed at optimizing SFM advisory service provision by stimulating demand (pull measures) and supply (push measures) in the market for advisory services provided by private advisors. Pull measures to stimulate farmer awareness and resultant demand for advisory services on SFM are dependent on a wider set of conditions A major finding is that there is a need to challenge the assumptions regarding the pull measures proposed in the literature, that is, that raising awareness on public goods will create a demand for related SFM advisory services and that this demand can be further stimulated by providing a financial incentive to purchase advice. As the results have shown, it was not only lack of awareness on the public good that prevented farmers from implementing farm-level measures to improve nutrient and mastitis management. A broader set of stimulating and inhibiting conditions was present. These included perceptions on the relative cost of the damage caused by the problem as compared to the cost of advice in the case of DUHC, disagreement with policies in the case of NMSS, and clarity and enforcement of regulations in both cases. These findings correspond with the view that advisory services are just one measure in a broader policy mix to stimulate more sustainable agriculture (see Van Woerkum, 1990; Parker et al., 2009). For SFM advice to be effective, it seems to be a precondition that such policy is clear, integrated and stable – a point that has also been noted elsewhere (Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004; Valentine et al., 2007). Nonetheless, the results suggest that economic incentives to some extent did activate farmers and advisors to become more conscious about addressing, respectively, nutrient management and mastitis prevention on their farms. However, in the case of NMSS, the vouchers encouraged advisor-induced demand for SFM advice, and they hence do not seem to be an effective measure to motivate farmers to actively demand SFM advice. Similar results are found with the DUHC udder health awards, as they rewarded a few people who were already intrinsically motivated, but did not stimulate broader farmer demand for udder health

advice. Indirect economic incentives, such as cost reduction and avoidance of fines, seemed more effective. In the case of NMSS, cost reduction seemed to be a fruitful entry point for discussing sustainable nutrient management practices. In the case of DUHC, lowering the cell count level at which a fine would have to be paid seemed to be the more promising approach (see also Valeeva et al., 2007). However, as Bruges and Smith (2008) noted, a risk arising from a focus on adopting SFM measures because of economic benefit is that these, instead of fundamentally challenging underlying perceptions on environmental problems and food safety, may undermine the very philosophy behind special interventions designed to stimulate farmers to go beyond mere compliance with minimum legislative requirements. So, the interaction between different policy instruments (advice, subsidies, fines, etc.) needs to be carefully addressed to avoid one instrument counteracting the other instead of reinforcing its effect. Ad-hoc, temporary push measures are helpful but likely to be inadequate for a sustained focus on SFM in regular farmer– advisor contacts As a facilitative farmer –advisor relationship is found to be the most promising for sustainability and complexity learning (Crawford et al., 2007; Ingram, 2008a), a push measure was to support advisors in creating such a relationship. To some degree, our results indicate that the interventions in fact brought about higher awareness of the public good issue in question, such as the environmental importance of nutrient management in the NMSS case. However, providing such support through ‘quality certification mechanisms’, such as those applied in NMMS, may be inadequate to guarantee that advisors take up this facilitative role. The NMSS case showed that many approved advisory services and information products have a catch-up-mode character. Judging advisory service descriptions and information products ex ante does not mean that this will actually lead to in-depth learning, as this fundamentally is determined in the interactive process between farmer and advisor. The criticism of the support tools (e.g. computer models) in NMSS and the lack of follow-up by veterinarians on the treatment plan that was provided by DUHC show that considerable attention needs to be paid to creating a conducive environment for effective farmer –advisor relationships to address SFM in regular service contacts. Furthermore, the intention was that the interventions should raise the quality of the regular farmer–advisor



service contacts in favour of in-depth learning on SFM, but there remains a dichotomy between the kind of services farmers demand (easily applicable and straightforward) and those that are intended to be provided through the intervention (in-depth learning trajectories), as both cases show. However, as the NMSS case shows, the intervention provided an excuse to address nutrient management more profoundly, despite the policy controversy. This thus enabled advisors – who in the NMSS case demonstrated that they had already mastered and mixed several advisory roles – to come out of their ‘comfort zone’ and switch from a reactive expert to a facilitative role. As the DUHC case shows, SFM advisory service provisioning benefited from being embedded within a wider context of (mass medial) communication efforts induced by the interventions. Thus, through the interventions, farmers are primed so that advisors have a better chance of providing this advice without having to fear that the commercial relationship will be damaged because of providing unwanted advice – a situation that Ingram (2008a) has indicated as a prohibitive factor. Integrating attention to SFM into regular advisory service provisioning vs. special public good projects and peer learning structures An issue that relates to the limitations of the previously discussed ad-hoc push measures is that those who are, in theory, the ideal specialized or embedded advisors may have inherent difficulties in providing adequate SFM advice. This is clearly shown in the DUHC programme which targeted veterinaries as the main information channel for farmers regarding mastitis, despite their being novices in providing preventive mastitis advice. The results suggest that veterinarians have not yet become engaged in a proactive discussion of SFM because they do not see themselves as having any influence on farmers’ decision making. This concurs with observations on the difficulty of engaging the curatively and reactively oriented veterinarians in proactive and preventive actions (see Cannas da Silva et al., 2006; Mee, 2007; Noordhuizen et al., 2008). In this regard, it is also telling that advisors in the NMSS case suggested that appointing a specialized ‘nutrient management advisor’, reflecting ideas on public good projects (see Garforth et al., 2003; Nagel and Von der Heiden, 2004), would be more appropriate than employing regular advisors. Also, the observed success of NMSS and DUHC study groups resonates

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with findings elsewhere about the usefulness of peer learning structures to achieve sustainability goals (Bentley et al., 2003; Cramb and Culasero, 2003). Consequently, contracting specific public good projects or peer learning structures may be more beneficial than inserting SFM topics into regular advisory contacts, especially where there is policy controversy. However, as our results show, such specialized projects and facilitated groups carry the risk of reaching only a small group of farmers. Also, given that these groups are often self-selected, it is likely that these farmers are already more motivated than others. Furthermore, our observations on the hesitancy to share farm figures indicate that it can be hard to get the sufficient degree of trust necessary to achieve in-depth learning in such externally induced study groups; this corresponds with earlier observations by Guijt and Proost (2002). So, in addition to public good projects and peer learning structures, it remains important to use regular farmer–advisor contacts to out-scale sustainable agricultural practice, given the width of their reach (cf. Bentley et al., 2003; Millar and Connell, 2009) and the degree of trust between advisor and farmer. This means, however, paying substantial attention to building the perception of advisors as regards their professional role and competencies. A weakness in this sense in the case of NMSS and DUHC appeared to be that they were seen as top-down interventions mainly aimed at achieving fixed government policy goals. Despite initial brainstorming to explore the views of advisors on the possible intervention designs (NMSS), having a farmers’ and veterinarians’ advisory panel (DUHC), and the efforts of both interventions to optimize knowledge system interaction, they did not involve ‘normal’ advisors continuously in intervention design. Such co-design of interventions enables the development of ownership (see Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004) and would have enabled a more fundamental discussion of advisors’ roles in, and perceptions towards, integrating SFM topics into regular advice. However, as Bruges and Smith (2008) stress, this implies that the policy goals behind the intervention should also be open to debate.

Conclusion All in all, it appears from the NMSS and DUHC cases that special interventions to support advisors in adequately addressing SFM in regular service contacts have some impact, and may manipulate farmer – advisor relationships towards fostering sustainable


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agricultural practice. However, this impact is limited and depends on a wider set of institutional conditions, such as the stability and clarity of environmental and food safety regulations, and the norms and values of specialized or embedded advisors about what they perceive as their task. Therefore, despite catalysing attention on SFM in regular advisory service contacts, one-off interventions such as NMSS and DUHC are not sufficient. Given issues such as advisor competencies and how expertise and contractual positions shape the farmer –advisor relationship, enabling a facilitative role for advisors calls for overarching attitude change on the part of both advisor and farmer. This is most likely to be a long-term affair. More durable investments are needed to ensure that

service contracts go beyond the catch-up mode of merely supporting compliance with minimum legal requirements and enable a process of knowledge co-production between advisor and client. Following Bawden (2007) and Koutsouris (2008), attention needs to be paid to both adequate training and continued support for advisors as regards attitudes and competencies needed to shape the facilitative advisory role that is required to fundamentally address SFM. Furthermore, because private advisors do not wish to force unwanted information upon clients, it is essential to create awareness about public good issues through, for example, mass media communication, and to provide a stable institutional setting in cases where such awareness already exists.

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