In 2010, Waikato and Bay of Plenty dairy farmers were surveyed by the Pasture Improvement Leadership Group (PILG) to better understand their attitudes, confidence and ability to make informed decisions on their pasture renewal practices. To assess changes in farmer behaviour towards pasture renewal and to measure the impact of the PILG, the survey was repeated in 2015. In comparison to 2010, the 2015 survey results were more positive. Farmers' confidence, attitude and satisfaction with their ability to successfully renew pasture, and to improve pasture performance have increased. However, some scepticism remains about time investment and the financial return from pasture renewal. These results suggest that the PILG aim of ensuring that consistent messages relating to pasture renewal are provided to farmers, appears to have been met. Farmers indicated in the 2015 survey that not only is there now better information available in comparison to 2010, the messages are also more consistent across the industry. Keywords: pasture renewal, pasture performance, farmer confidence, farmer attitude, communication

The Pasture Renewal Leadership Group (PRLG) has undertaken four surveys among its members, dairy farmers, seed retailers and contractors to assess the effectiveness of the PRLG's communication around the topic of pasture renewal. This paper reviews these surveys and focusses on the interactions between the different respondent groups and the influence of the interactions on farmers' pasture renewal practices, based on the information sources each respondent group used and the credibility they attribute to them. The main information sources for farmers are farm consultants and scientists, whereas the other respondent groups mainly use their everyday contacts. Perceived credibility of the information sources by the information users, as well as the confidence level of the information user in decisionmaking about pasture renewal, influenced which information sources were used. However, consistency and clarity of the information itself remains an issue, due to competition amongst the information sources and the increased complexity of the knowledge behind pasture renewal. Keywords: pasture renewal, communication, interaction, information sources, survey

Abstract Effective pasture management in the dairy sector is supported by the pasture renewal practices (PRPs) undertaken by farmers. However, the rate and extent of adoption of PRPs by farmers is influenced by their attitudes toward pasture renewal. The aim of this paper was to help the understanding of drivers and barriers that could be derived from the investigation of farmer attitudes to pasture renewal, and to relate credibility of information sources to their perceptions of pasture renewal. A two-step process was applied to existing survey data of dairy farmers in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions of New Zealand. First, a factor analysis clustered the dairy farmers into different groups based on their attitudes to pasture renewal. The results show that satisfaction with previous pasture renewal experiences was an important factor affecting farmer adoption. Second, the results from a correlation analysis between the different clusters, indicates that information from local experts and farmers was valued the most by all groups as they were perceived to be the most credible. Motivated farmers also tended to seek guidance from credible publications and websites. Keywords: pasture renewal, dairy farmers, information credibility, factor analysis