Suchergebnisse

Although no GM crops currently are licensed for commercial production in the UK, as opposition to GM crops by consumers softens, this could change quickly. Although past studies have examined attitudes of UK farmers toward GM technologies in general, there has been little work on the impact of possible coexistence measures on their attitudes toward GM crop production. This could be because the UK Government has not engaged in any public dialogue on the coexistence measures that might be applied on farms. Based on a farm survey, this article examines farmers' attitudes toward GM technologies and planting intentions for three crops (maize, oilseed rape, and sugar beet) based on a GM availability scenario. The article then nuances this analysis with a review of farmer perceptions of the level of constraint associated with a suite of notional farm-level coexistence measures and issues, based on current European Commission guidelines and practice in other EU Member States.

AbstractImprovements in the welfare of farmed animals in the EU have been achieved by legislation, increased welfare capacity in the food chain, greater public awareness, welfare measurement tools and dissemination of best practice. However, pressure for improvement grows. The EC recognizes that delivering improved welfare would best be achieved by increasing welfare capacity, including establishing a Network of Welfare Reference Centres to provide support for welfare research, knowledge transfer and policy design. Designing a structure for this Network presents a challenge, as it would have multiple functions, interact with diverse stakeholders and operate in a complex environment. Here, we describe the use of a novel strategic planning approach to design an optimal structure for this Network. Our evaluation found that no existing structure was ideal, but that by taking functional units from several existing models, an optimal model could be identified.

Free range egg producers face continuing problems from injurious pecking (IP) which has financial consequences for farmers and poor welfare implications for birds. Beak trimming has been practised for many years to limit the damage caused by IP, but with the UK Government giving notification that they intend to ban beak trimming in 2016, considerable efforts have been made to devise feasible housing, range and management strategies to reduce IP. A recent research project investigated the efficacy of a range of IP reducing management strategies, the mean costs of which came to around 5 pence per bird. Here, the results of the above project's consumer survey are presented: consumers' attitudes to free range egg production are detailed showing that, whilst consumers had a very positive attitude towards free range eggs, they were especially uninformed about some aspects of free range egg production. The contingent valuation technique was used to estimate the price premium consumers would be prepared to pay to ensure that hens do not suffer from IP: this was calculated as just over 3% on top of the prevailing retail price of free range eggs. These findings reinforce other studies that have found that whilst consumers are not generally well-informed about certain specific welfare problems faced by animals under free range conditions, they are prepared to pay to improve animal welfare. Indeed, the study findings suggest that producers could obtain an additional price premium if they demonstrate the welfare provenance of their eggs, perhaps through marketing the eggs as coming from birds with intact beaks. This welfare provenance issue could usefully be assured to consumers by the introduction of a mandatory, single, accredited EU-wide welfare-standards labelling scheme.

This paper reports on a study that identified a range of crop-trait combinations that are: agronomically suited to the EU; provide advantages to arable farmers and consumers; and are either already available in international markets, or advancing along the development pipeline and likely to become available by 2025. An expert stakeholder panel was recruited and asked for their views, using the Delphi approach, on the impact of these crop-traits on enterprise competitiveness, through changes to yields, production costs and product prices. In terms of input traits, there was consensus that traits such as herbicide tolerant/insect resistant (HT/IR) maize, HT sugar beet and HT soya bean would provide positive benefits for farmers. Output-side traits such as winter-sown rape with reduced saturated fats, were seen as offering benefits to consumers, but were either likely to be restricted to niche markets, or offer relatively modest price premia to farmers growing them. Our analysis of the financial impact of the adoption of GM crops more widely in the EU, showed that the competitiveness of the agricultural sector could well be improved by this. However, such improvements would be relatively small-scale in that large-scale national natural advantages from either economic or environmental conditions is unlikely to be overturned.

Abstract.  This article demonstrates that the design and nature of agricultural support schemes has an influence on farmers' perception of their level of dependence on agricultural support. While direct aid payments inform farmers about the extent to which they are subsidised, indirect support mechanisms veil the level of subsidisation, and therefore they are not fully aware of the extent to which they are supported. To test this hypothesis, we applied data from a survey of 4,500 farmers in three countries: the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal. It is demonstrated that indirect support, such as that provided through artificially high consumer prices, gives an illusion of free and competitive markets among farmers. This 'visibility' hypothesis is evaluated against an alternative hypothesis that assumes farmers have complete, or at least a fairly comprehensive level of, information on agricultural support schemes. Our findings show that this alternative hypothesis can be ruled out.

The impetus to adopt integrated pest management (IPM) practices has re‐emerged in the last decade, mainly as a result of legislative and environmental drivers. However a significant deficit exists in the ability to practically monitor and measure IPM adoption across arable farms; therefore the aim of the project reported here was to establish a universal metric for quantifying adoption of IPM in temperate arable farming. This was achieved by: (a) identifying a set of key activities that contribute to IPM; (b) weighting these in terms of their importance to the achievement of IPM using panels of expert stakeholders in order to create the metric (scoring system from 0‐100 indicating level of IPM practiced); (c) surveying arable farmers in the UK and Ireland about their pest management practices; and (d) measuring level of farmer adoption of IPM using the new metric.