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Are fencelines sites of engagement or avoidance in farmer adoption of alternative practices?

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Abstract

Understanding what factors can positively or negatively affect farmers’ decisions to adopt new practices is of particular importance to agricultural researchers and practitioners. Few studies in adoption research have examined the role that fenceline neighbours can play in influencing the decisions of their neighbours to adopt new practices, especially in North America. Prior research on adoption suggests that there are spatial effects that exist in adoption decisions, such as the uptake of new farming practices. For example, previous qualitative research with farmers has suggested that fenceline neighbours are influential but can have both positive and negative effects on adoption decisions. A standardized way of understanding fenceline neighbour influences is lacking. Our study presents a novel question set to examine fenceline neighbour dynamics and discusses its application in a survey examining the alternative practice adoption of adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP) by Canadian beef farmers. Our study highlights both the utility of our question set and how our question set can be used to provide new insights into local farmer social dynamics (e.g., how farmers engage with their neighbours and what factors influence engagement) and their influence on decisions to adopt. Specifically, our results identified two types of fenceline neighbour behaviors—engagers, and avoiders—and AMP farmers were more likely to be involved in engaged behaviors. Overall, we provide a question set that can be further integrated with trust, risk, and normative theoretical lenses to examine the role of fenceline neighbour dynamics in agricultural adoption and other contexts and call for more landholder research that examines neighbour-to-neighbour effects.

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Fig. 1

Abbreviations

AMP:

Adaptive Multi-paddock Grazing.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Kate Stiefelmeyer at Kynetec for support with data collection, and Babita Bohra, Braja Bandhu Swain, and Ellen Chappell for early discussions of statistical approaches. Thanks also to session participants at the 2021 IASNR Conference where this work was first presented for their feedback. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through an Insight Grant to Sherren [435-2015-0702], and a Mitacs Elevate postdoctoral fellowship (IT28741) to McWherter, with the partnership of Farmers for Climate Solutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University, 6100 University Ave, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada

    Kate Sherren, Brooke McWherter & Seonaid MacDonell

  2. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Saskatchewan, Agriculture Building 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A8, Canada

    H. M. Tuihedur Rahman

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  1. Kate Sherren
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Correspondence to Kate Sherren.

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Sherren, K., Rahman, H.M.T., McWherter, B. et al. Are fencelines sites of engagement or avoidance in farmer adoption of alternative practices?. Agric Hum Values 40, 1359–1365 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10426-6

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