a b s t r a c tImproving animal welfare is an important part of the development of the agricultural industry, particularly at a time when intensification and the encroachment of factory-style production systems is making the maintenance of human-animal relations increasingly difficult. Animal science deals with the issue of improving stockmanship by focusing on the relationships between attitudes and behaviour, under the premise that improved attitudes will lead to improved behaviour. From an analysis of 42 interviews with owners, sharemilkers and workers on dairy farms in New Zealand we present a different view, seeing behaviour instead as part of a self-reinforcing culture in which animals, humans and the physical structure all contribute to the development of farm specific ways of doing and being. We further suggest that changing one stockperson's attitude alone is insufficient to ensure a change in the culture as other actors e including animals and non-human actors e reinforce any existing culture that has developed, making both attitudinal and behavioural change difficult. We conclude by discussing the key importance of designing farm systems and structures that promote positive interactions between animals and humans and suggest that this, rather than simply promoting knowledge and attitudinal change, is likely to be the most effective way of maintaining stockmanship in the face of an industrialising agriculture.

Market liberalisation/globalisation and climate change are two great global political/economic challenges of our time. Researchers have noted that the coincidence of these events has resulted in 'double exposure' where the positive or negative effects can overlap creating a pattern of winners and losers, particularly in the agricultural sector. However, existing research has been focused on developing economies leaving the issue of double exposure in economically developed economies relatively under-researched. To address this gap, this paper examines three droughts that occurred in North Otago/South Canterbury (New Zealand) over the last 30 years, and focuses on how market liberalisation in 1984 influenced dryland sheep farmers' ability to cope with drought. From in-depth farmer interviews we find that neoliberalism's impact has changed as the neoliberal project has developed from a position where there were few winners (1980s), to few losers (1990s), and, currently, to increasingly sectorally based winners and losers (2000s). We relate this to the developing influence of neoliberalism and suggest how neoliberalism may be influencing the vulnerability of agriculture to future droughts. A key finding is how neoliberalism has promoted the reconfiguring of rural space around the expanding dairy industry and how this is now influencing the vulnerability of both dryland sheep and dairy farmers to future droughts. Finally, we briefly consider the implications of the findings for the 'double exposure' framework.

Outbreaks of insect pests can cause major losses in pasture productivity, but farmers are often poorly equipped to evaluate risk factors, predict pest impacts and determine appropriate control actions. Decision tools are described for pasture pest management using three case studies. For grass grub, "at risk" paddocks are identified based on factors such as time since sowing, soil type and larval damage the previous autumn/ winter. Targeted populations measurements can then be taken and a decision to control grass grub made using this objective measurement and/or an assessment of the pasture value, termed the insurance approach. For manuka beetle, pesticide application decisions are based on damage scores of individual paddocks and the correlation between these scores and larval densities. With porina, information on moth flight times, larval populations and pasture damage are used to make key control decisions. For all pests, decisions to control should be made in conjunction with other farm systems information, including the costs of lost forage production and long-term impacts on pasture persistence. Keywords: grass grub (Costelytra zealandica), porina (Wiseana spp.), manuka beetle (Pyronota spp.), farmer decision-making