Julie Ingram

1
Farm Advisers and the Transition to Sustainable
Soil Management in England agronomists
competence and skills
Julie Ingram jingram_at_glos.ac.uk ESRC-funded PhD
research COUNTRYSIDE AND COMMUNITY RESEARCH
UNIT UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE
2
CONTEXT
Policy

• Draft Soil Strategy
• First Soil Action Plan for England
• Compliance with GAEC - Soil Management Plan
• NVZs and Water Framework Directive

3
Research and Dissemination

• CoGAP for Protection of Soil
• Controlling Soil Erosion by Water
• Managing Livestock Manures
• Fertiliser Recommendations for Arable and
  Horticultural Crops, RB209
• Best Farming Practices profiting from a good
  environment

4
Research and Dissemination

• Principles of Best Management Practices (BMP) for
  soil
• Protecting soil structure
• Maintain soil organic matter
• Protect soil from compaction through overworking
  
• Protect soil from damage by livestock
• Protect soil from run off
• Nutrient management
• Managing manures, allow for manure nutrient
  content
• Targeting target amount and timing of artificial
  fertilisers

5
Need for advice

• Soil BMP are complex and knowledge-intensive.
  Farmers require more information and on-farm
  advice to support them in their transition to
  soil BMP. This has been demonstrated for other
  knowledge intensive practices
• IFS (Park et al 1997 Morris and Winter 1999)
• Conservation agriculture (Tebrugge and Bohrnsen
  2001 Coughenour 2003)
• Organic farming (Burton et al 1999)

6
Need for advice

• The farm adviser has always been an important and
  influential actor on the farm
• ADAS (and NAAS) for arable advice
• Agri-environmental policy implementation
• Organic farming
• Pollution prevention advice
• Conservation FWAG
• Agronomy

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• To provide evidence of the role that farm
  advisers play in the acquisition, generation and
  transfer of knowledge about soil BMP
• To elicit the factors that enable and constrain
  these knowledge processes

8
METHODOLOGY

• Quantitative
• Postal questionnaires sent to all advisers
  identified who might influence soil management
  decisions on farm
• 410 questionnaires with 40 responses rate

9
METHODOLOGY

• Qualitative
• Case Studies semistructured interviews
• Landcare Project
• The UK Soil Management Initiative (SMI)
• Sundial Fertiliser Recommendation System

10
Who are the farm advisers?

• Privatisation of ADAS gt
• Diversity
• Proliferation
• Emerging NGO community
• Increased commercial community
• Numerous BMP initiatives

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A Diverse Adviser Community
ONE TO ONE WITH FARMERS
ARABLE
ENVIRONMENTAL
CONSERVATION
PROTECTION
Independent
ADAS pollution
FWAG
Agronomist
prevention
Distributor
Environment Agency
ADAS
Agronomist
EPOs
Agricultural
NGOs eg. National
Consultant
Trust, RSPB, GCT,
Farm Business
DEFRA RDS
Adviser
ESA, CCS Project
Officers
ADAS campaigns,
HGCA
NGOs eg LEAF,
roadshows,
MGA
IACPA, Wildlife
demonstration farms
TAG
Trusts, Local
Authorities
NGO initiatives eg
DEFRA Initiatives
SMI, TAMAR,
AGRIKNOWLEDGE
Demonstration farms
LANDCARE
ONE TO GROUP WITH FARMERS
12
Who are the agronomists?

• FACTS registered 1600
• Distributor agronomists
• eg Agrovista, UAP, Dalgetty, Masstock and Banks
  Cargill
• Independent agronomists (crop consultants)
• AICC 180 members, BIAC 300 members

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RESULTS
Adviser observations of soil degradation
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Comparison of the use of soil BMP guidelines by
agronomists and ADAS advisers
120
100
80

60
40
20
0
Soil
RB209
MANNER
Manure
Soil Code
survey
Leaflets
maps and
Independent
Publications
bulletins
Distributor
ADAS
15
Comparison of recommendation of soil BMPs by
agronomists and ADAS advisers
120
100
80
respondents
60
40
20
0
Min-Till
Targeted N
Buffer strips
Cover crops
Contour ploughing
Manure nutrients
Timed cultivations
Independent agronomist
Low compaction machinery
Distributor agronomist
ADAS
soil BMP
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Adviser perception of soil degradation compared
to priority given to soil protection
17
Factors that constrain agronomists in providing
soil BMP advice to farmers

• Competence and skills
• Accessing relevant information
• Lack of confidence in soil BMP
• Commercial priorities - meeting their own and the
  farmer business objectives

18
Competence and skills
Agronomists? Theres no such thing as a standard
agronomist. Everyone and his dog calls himself an
agronomist now it's a term that covers a
multitude of sins (Independent agronomist D)
Some advisers are very knowledgeable, they have
a natural feeling and aptitude to crops and
soils, some are not so knowledgeable to put it
more politely (Farmer A)
19
Competence and skills
It all goes down to what youre growing on if
you let the top soil drain out of the field you
are loosing your growing medium, which is silly
(Independent agronomist R) They agronomists
are very good but most take little interest in
soils they expect the farmer to look after the
soil and cultivations and they look after the
plant and hope it has got some roots (ADAS
adviser)
20
Agronomists find soil BMP difficult
Nutrient Budgeting In terms of how do I know
whether Ive got the N rate right? - I dontIll
have a stab at it (Independent agronomist N) I
appreciate that N applications and getting the
rate right is one of the most difficult things we
have to do as advisers (Independent agronomist
E) Well, who can cope with manures? You have to
make a stab at it and estimate what's going on
(Independent agronomist P)
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Reasons for lack of competence

• Not a lack of use of training and support tools

Agronomists use of support tools and training
22
Reasons for lack of competence
Reliance on experience I use a certain amount of
user knowledge and it's difficult to replace that
- thats the most valuable thing (Distributor
agronomist T)   Having worked in fertiliser
industry I live and breath N recommendations
intuitively (Independent agronomist S)   Were
living with it all the timeAgronomists do this
job the whole time they know whats missing
(Independent agronomist D)
23
Reasons for lack of competence
Experience fails in unfamiliar situations You
could say that in known conditions with a regular
arable rotation there is an intuitive level which
we could establish with reasonable level of
confidence. But in high fertility situations,
this is where we come unstuck and struggle
(Independent agronomist P) Yes, so your local
knowledge and experience helps you with normality
because you know where your bench mark is but
it's when it becomes unfamiliar we have problems
(Independent agronomist L)
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Lack of hands-on experience
Cultivations I'm an advisory agronomist who has a
lot of technical information at my finger tips
but Im not a practical farming manager and we
are stepping over the borders here a little bit
(Independent agronomist J) A lot of people I
know who work in the soils field and agronomy
advisory field are actually very weak on soils,
on hands-on soils they really are they just
haven't got their minds around it ... one of the
fundamental thing is timeliness and soil moisture
The only way youll understand about soil
capability and timeliness is by doing it and
doing it for quite a while and thats the
problem, these people, they dont actually do it
(EA representative)
25
Lack of hands-on experience
Reduced Cultivations The thing is in some of
those situations it's failing, not because it's
being used inappropriately, but it's been used
with inappropriate guidance.we dont have the
experienced agronomists to provide the helping
hand, we have information but not the experts
(SMI board member) There has got to be a much
better informed adviser group in this country
able to look at farm and interpret and ensure
they are using the right equipment and discuss
with farmers in a knowledgeable way which way
their cultivation should be going. At the moment
an awful lot of farmers suck it and see (SMI
board member)
26
Lack of experience and competence makes
agronomists risk averse
Farm advisers I know from personal experience
they dont want to see too many changes happening
on your farm because it's another problem for
them .if you plough your land and do a
conventional cultivation system it takes quite a
few problems out of their hands. If you get a
crop failure youre not going to come back to
them and say I think your advice is bad because
you advised me to min till it and look at all the
black grass I've got, and this, that and the
other (Farmer SMI member)
27
Factors that constrain agronomists in providing
soil BMP advice to farmers

• Competence and skills
• Accessing relevant information
• Lack of confidence in soil BMP
• Commercial priorities - meeting their own and the
  farmer business objectives

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Overcoming agronomists constraints
Experience
Information training
Competence skills
Confidence
Credible advice
Successful implementation
Demonstration
Research dissemination
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CONCLUSIONS

• Evidence shows agronomists are actively seeking
  out formal sources of information through
  training and using soil BMP tools and guides to
  support them.
• However a number of constraints regarding how
  agronomists use and generate knowledge are
  hampering effective use, most notably competence
  and skills.
• Although emphasis has been placed on re-skilling
  farmers to equip them for sustainable
  agriculture, few have considered the fact that
  advisers equally need to be re-equipped if they
  are to support farmers in the transition to
  sustainable agriculture.
• EU Member states to have their own advisory
  service by 2007.