Divergent farmer and scientist perceptions of agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem services and decision-making

Maas, Bea; Fabian, Yvonne; Kross, Sara M.; Richter, Anett

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109065

Cited by 59 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…This result parallels the findings by Vogel (1996) who did not find an effect of farmers' education on environmental concerns either. However, our results stand in contrast to Maas et al (2021). In a study of farmers' perceptions of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Germany and Austria, they found that lower education level was correlated with lower importance attributed to biodiversity and ecosystem services (Maas et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…However, our results stand in contrast to Maas et al (2021). In a study of farmers' perceptions of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Germany and Austria, they found that lower education level was correlated with lower importance attributed to biodiversity and ecosystem services (Maas et al, 2021). Conflicting results about the role of education in famers' environmental concerns might be explained by a lack of detail pertaining to farmers' education.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 97%

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Environmental Concerns and Stewardship Behaviors Among Rural Landowners: What Supports Farmers and Non-farmers in Being Good Stewards?

Drescher

Warriner

2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Intensive agriculture is a main factor of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss globally. It is therefore of great importance to understand how rural landowners are managing their lands and how environmental stewardship behaviors could be strengthened. Farming and non-farming rural landowners are often considered a homogenous group. In reality, however, they vary by their histories, attitudes, interests, and resources. While many rural landowners manage their lands with environmental values in mind, others may struggle to do so. Ignoring this diversity poses the risk that planning and policy for sustainable agriculture are less effective than they could be. Hence, it is of interest to understand the variety of environmental perceptions and stewardship behaviors across these varied groups. To help addressing this knowledge gap, we conducted a survey of 1,200 farming and non-farming rural landowners, using Ontario as a case study. We specifically investigated whether farming landowners differed from non-farming landowners in expressed environmental concerns and stewardship behaviors, as well as what the roles are of participation in conservation incentive programs, demographic factors, and landholding characteristics. We analyzed survey answers with logistic regression and text analysis. Our results suggest that farming landowners are generally less environmentally concerned than non-farming landowners. However, it appears that this difference may be less driven by farm ownership than by contextual factors, such as landowner age and participation in conservation programs. Participation in conservation programs was more pronounced for non-farming landowners and was associated with higher likelihood of environmental concerns and engaging with stewardship behaviors. In contrast, higher age emerged as predictor of lower environmental concerns. In addition, we found that cost factors and knowledge needs were important barriers for stewardship behaviors across farming and non-farming rural landowners. Based on our results, we are making recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of agricultural sustainability planning and policy in Ontario, focusing on reducing financial and knowledge barriers to pro-environmental land management behaviors.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 97%

Environmental Concerns and Stewardship Behaviors Among Rural Landowners: What Supports Farmers and Non-farmers in Being Good Stewards?

Drescher

Warriner

2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…To account for any uncertainty and potential bias in this convenient sampling method, we took some precautions and applied controls before the data analyses (Maas et al, 2021), for example: (i) distributing the survey online and on paper; (ii) distributing the survey at 9 ports to achieve higher levels of diversity and sample size in our survey (Annex 3); (iii) controlling demographic representativeness by comparing our survey sample to census data concerning the fishers, showing a high level of representativeness for age and a higher representation of artisanal groups compared to the overall fishing populations. In addition, sampling bias was avoided through; (iv) the participants' self-identification with the type of fishing that the fishers practice, type of boat, and type of fishing gear used, (v) reliability analyses of scale (Cronbach's Alpha for internal validity).…”

Section: Questionnaire Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

By-catch of sea turtles in Pacific artisanal fishery: Two points of view: From observer and fishers

et al. 2022

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Fisheries bycatch is a primary driver of population declines in marine megafauna. These captures not only have environmental impacts, they also have economic consequences for fishers such as direct losses when repairing fishing gear. Therefore, evaluating the fishers’ perception of bycatch and comparing it with data from scientific fisheries observers might provide a broader view of the current situation these species face. To do this, we obtained data concerning the bycatch of 1,838 sea turtles between 2008-2018 in the Eastern Pacific Ocean as well as informative surveys from 421 artisanal fishers surveyed in 2020. There is a discrepancy between the bycatch observed and the fishers’ perceptions of it. The observers’ results identified that high rates of incidental capture of sea turtles are associated with the mahi mahi fishery that occurs during winter and is a shallow set fishery using fish as bait. The olive ridley turtle was the main species affected by bycatch. According to the fishers’ perception, bycatch was higher with the use of J-hooks and a longline (compared to circle hooks and to gill nets and trawl nets) and when the target species are pelagic fish during the winter season. In addition, the fishers’ perception showed that 39.4% considered incidental fishing as an environmental problem and 28.5% considered it as a nuisance, while 32.1% do not consider sea turtle bycatch as a problem. These findings suggest that 60% of fishers do not consider it a need to protect sea turtles. Given the different responses between fisheries observers and fishers’ perception, it is clear that more dialogue is necessary to raise awareness about the effects of bycatch on worldwide sea turtle populations. Thus, there is an enormous potential to recruit/increase fishers’ active participation for turtle protection. In this context, the idea of including the fishers’ perception into any management strategy or conservation measure should be reinforced in order to effectively reduce the bycatch of these iconic species.

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“…This has obfuscated discussions and implementation of diversification strategies, particularly the differences between temporal and spatial diversity (Aramburu Merlos and Hijmans 2020 ). Second, perceptions of agricultural biodiversity differ between researchers and farmers: researchers may hold idealistic views of the value of diversification, whereby farmers may not view those same processes positively (Maas et al 2021 ). Finally, highly input-intensive production systems, specifically those relying on inputs such as genetically modified crop breeds and glyphosate-based herbicides, are socially, technologically, and economically locked into modern agricultural systems; these lock-ins impede crop diversification at all levels of the value chain and promote short-term profit over long-term resilience (Roesch-McNally et al 2018a ; Meynard et al 2018 ; Cradock-Henry 2021 ; Clapp 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crop diversification in Idaho’s Magic Valley: the present and the imaginary

Spangler

Burchfield

Radel

et al. 2022

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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The simplification of agricultural landscapes, particularly in the United States (US), has contributed to alarming rates of environmental degradation. As such, increasing agrobiodiversity throughout the US agri-food system is a crucial goal toward mitigating these harmful impacts, and crop diversification is one short-term mechanism to begin this process. However, despite mounting evidence of its benefits, crop diversification strategies have yet to be widely adopted in the US. Thus, we explore barriers and bridges to crop diversification for current farmers, focused on the Magic Valley of southern Idaho—a region with higher crop diversity relative to the US norm. We address two main research questions: (1) how and why do farmers in this region enact temporal and/or spatial strategies to manage crop diversity (the present) and (2) what are the barriers and bridges to alternative diversification strategies (the imaginary)? Through a political agroecology and spatial imaginaries lens, we conducted and analyzed 15 farmer and 14 key informant interviews between 2019 and 2021 to gauge what farmers are doing to manage crop diversity (the present) and how they imagine alternative landscapes (the imaginary). We show that farmers in this region have established a regionally diversified landscape by relying primarily on temporal diversification strategies—crop rotations and cover cropping—but do not necessarily pair these with other spatial diversification strategies that align with an agroecological approach. Furthermore, experimenting with and imagining new landscapes is possible (and we found evidence of such), but daily challenges and structural constraints make these processes not only difficult but unlikely and even “dangerous” to dream of. Therein, we demonstrate the importance of centering who is farming and why they make certain decisions as much as how they farm to support agroecological transformation and reckoning with past and present land use paradigms to re-imagine what is possible. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00833-0.

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Divergent farmer and scientist perceptions of agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem services and decision-making

Cited by 59 publications

References 54 publications

Environmental Concerns and Stewardship Behaviors Among Rural Landowners: What Supports Farmers and Non-farmers in Being Good Stewards?

Environmental Concerns and Stewardship Behaviors Among Rural Landowners: What Supports Farmers and Non-farmers in Being Good Stewards?

By-catch of sea turtles in Pacific artisanal fishery: Two points of view: From observer and fishers

Crop diversification in Idaho’s Magic Valley: the present and the imaginary

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