‘We’re Farmers Not Foresters’: Farmers’ Decision-Making and Behaviours towards Managing Trees for Pests and Diseases

Abstract

Policy makers are challenged to find ways of influencing and supporting land manager behaviours and actions to deal with the impacts of increasing pressure from tree pests and diseases. This paper investigates attitudes and behaviours of farmers towards managing trees on farmland for pests and diseases. Data collection with farmers included deliberative workshops and semi-structured interviews. Data were thematically analyzed using the COM-B (Capacity/Opportunity/Motivation-Behaviour) model to understand the drivers of farmer behaviour for tree health. Results suggested farmers had some knowledge, experience and skills managing trees, but they did not recognize this capacity. Social norms and networks impacted the context of opportunity to act for tree health, along with access to trusted advice and labour, and the costs associated with management action. Motivational factors such as self-efficacy, perceived benefits of acting, personal interest and sense of agency were impacted by farmers’ self-identity as food producers. The COM-B model also provides a framework for identifying intervention design through a Behaviour Change Wheel. This suggests that enhancing self-efficacy supported by the right kind of advice and guidance, framed and communicated in farmers’ terms and brokered by appropriate knowledge intermediaries, seems critical to building action amongst different farmer types and attitudinal groups.

The opportunities and challenges to co-designing policy options for tree health with policy makers, researchers and land managers

“…From the outset, the team was encouraged to view the co-design process as a series of steps, each building on the other, and each bringing land managers along on a codesign journey. Three steps or phases of codesign occurred between 2018 and 2021, each of a year in duration, following funding cycles (Ambrose-Oji et al, 2021;2019;2020). Each phase began by engaging and building relationships with land managers through a process of understanding their lived experiences dealing with tree pests and diseases, learning more about how they did or did not act in response and how their actions were related to the current tree health policy mechanisms.…”