Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery: Report of scenario building workshops Environmental Land Management Test and Trial for Defra

This report presents an overview of findings from the scenario building workshops, held as part of the ELM Test and Trial: Co-designing long-term agreements for landscape recovery. The aim of these workshops was to develop, with participants, three high-level scenarios around which a long-term agreement for landscape recovery (LR) might be formed. Potential barriers and enablers to a long-term agreement based on each scenario were tested out, and participants’ suggestions for improvements were used to refine the scenarios. Consensus was sought as to which scenario should be taken forward to the next phase of the Test and Trial, where a template long-term agreement will be drafted based upon one of these. Two two-hour workshops were held during this phase. Firstly, an online workshop was held with ten non-farming stakeholders. This was followed by a two-hour in-person farmer workshop which was attended by five participants. In addition, invitees who were unable to attend either of the workshops were given the chance to comment on the scenarios by contributing to the online Miro boards or via email correspondence for a period of two weeks after each workshop. The workshops employed a mix of discussion and participatory techniques, in order to elicit in-depth information according to the predesigned protocol

Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery: Final Report. Environmental Land Management Test and Trial for DEFRA

This report presents an overview of the findings from the Defra-funded ELM Test and Trial: Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery. It describes the co-design methodology that the Test and Trial (T&T) used, and explains the co-designed development process used to produce a template head of terms long-term agreement (LTA). This is followed by a detailed summary of the key findings from each milestone of the T&T, before we draw conclusions about the potential viability of an LTA of this kind for Landscape Recovery (LR). Finally, recommendations are made for increasing the likelihood of the uptake and successful implementation of LTAs, especially in lowland, agriculturally productive landscapes. During this T&T, we held eight two-hour workshops, four with non-farming stakeholders and four with farmers1. We also held two-hour group interviews with a total of six farmers, and follow-up and evaluation interviews with six participants. A total of 35 different participants took part in the T&T: 22 stakeholders and 13 farmers. Most participants attended workshops during at least two milestones of the T&T, lending consistency to discussions over the course of the T&T and ensuring that outputs have been co-designed with participants

Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery: Report of initial scoping workshops Environmental Land Management Test and Trial for Defra

This report presents an overview of findings from the initial scoping workshops held as part of the ELMs Test and Trial: Co-designing long-term agreements for landscape recovery. The aim of the initial workshops was to gather participants’ thoughts on long-term agreements, collaborative arrangements within agricultural or environmental practice, and private or blended finance agreements. The workshops also sought to gain insights into any existing experience participants may have with these matters. Four two-hour workshops were held during this scoping phase. Firstly, an online stakeholder workshop was held with ten participants. This was followed by three in-person farmer workshops; a total of eleven participants attended across these latter three workshops. These workshops employed a mix of discussion and participatory techniques, in order to elicit in-depth information according to the pre-designed protocol. There was broad consensus across all the workshops that Landscape Recovery agreements should be holistic in their approach to environmental gains, covering a range of different outcomes rather than having a single focus

Exploring the socio-economic dynamics and innovation capacities of rural food and farming microbusinesses

Non-technical summary: This report provides a range of data-informed insights significant to developing rural food systems, agricultural sustainability and rural innovation. We have found that the participants from the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) tend to be younger than their farming peers and run smaller enterprises. They are more likely to be new entrants and do not necessarily identify as 'farmers' having started to produce sustainable, healthy, local food. Most operate a portfolio of enterprises diversified mainly into the food system, processing and retailing food rather than selling along the food chain or servicing the agricultural sector. To that extent, they constitute the local food sector, with 90% selling their products within 25 miles of their business and 40% within five miles. Although many are owner-operators, a sizeable minority employ others. Given the scope and demands of these portfolios of enterprises, diverse skills and a highly entrepreneurial outlook are standard requirements. These businesses' social and environmental engagements are the primary motivation for the business operators, with profit as means to these ends. Volunteering opportunities are a crucial offer from these businesses, which brings a cascade of benefits to all those involved. Improving and regenerating the farmed environment is an equal priority, with aspirations to protect the soil, deepen the resilience of the farm biodiversity and minimise pollution. In these ways, these diverse, complex and sophisticated clusters of enterprises are making a distinctive contribution to the rural economy. The challenges reported are accessing appropriate finance, under-developed markets, insufficient targeted business support, inflexible planning arrangements, and agri-environmental schemes that do not embrace this group. This group falls between many policy stools, not traditional farmers, but not food or catering businesses. Yet, they are focused on delivering many of the ’public goods’ to which government policy is committed. The resilience and innovation they bring to rural areas are essential to the diversity of businesses that help rural areas thrive. We make 10 suggestions as to how rural actors – state, private and civil society – could provide support to these microbusinesses

Co-designing long-term agreements for Landscape Recovery: Head of Terms Template Agreement. Environmental Land Management Test and Trial for DEFRA

This document provides Heads of Terms (HoT) guidance for drafting the terms for a long-term agreement (LTA) to enter into a Landscape Recovery (LR) project with Defra and other private sources of funding, should a blended finance approach be adopted. The template HoT has been informed by a combination of desk research, workshops and interviews with land managers and other stakeholders, and the expert knowledge of Strutt & Parker. After an initial review of literature on existing forms of LTA (see Barkley, Short & Chivers 2022), we carried out eight workshops and a series of group and individual interviews with a total of 35 participants (see Barkley, Chivers & Short 2022a, 2022b and 2023). During these, we sought to better understand the key barriers and enablers to participation in LTAs for LR. We also co-designed, with participants, a hypothetical Natural Flood Management (NFM) scenario, around which the template LTA is framed. Initial drafts of clauses for the HoT agreement were shared with participants at workshops and interviews, and final revisions have been made to the document as a result of participant feedback from these sessions. We focused on developing, with participants, an agreement that could meet the needs of agriculturally productive land managers in a lowland, multi-party context. In this document, we detail the clauses that would likely need to be included when drawing up an LTA in this context. By presenting these clauses as they are shown here, we illustrate the many variations that may arise when working with different land managers and stakeholders, each of whom are likely to have differing requirements of an agreement

Social research to understand farmer and agricultural stakeholder attitudes towards bovine tuberculosis vaccination of cattle

Background: This social research study employed a behavioural insights framework, Easy, Attractive, Social, Timely (‘EAST’), to identify cues that may influence farmer and stakeholder attitudes towards the deployment of Cattle BCG vaccine. Methods: The EAST framework was employed to develop policy scenarios consisting of several cues likely to affect vaccine uptake. These scenarios consisted of a government-led approach, an individual farmer-led approach, and a third approach, also farmer-led but organised collectively. The government approach was mandatory, while the farmer-led approaches were both voluntary. The scenarios were tested during farmer participatory workshops (n=8)and stakeholder interviews (n=35). Results: Overall, the EAST framework provided a useful approach for gathering behavioural insights around attitudes towards cattle vaccination. We found an overall receptiveness towards the idea of vaccinating cattle against bovine tuberculosis, particularly where clear, transparent messaging around the likely efficacy is mobilised, where clarity around potential implications for trading is provided, and where vaccine doses are provided free of charge and administered by veterinarians and veterinary technicians. In general, these factors were a pre-requisite to a mandatory (government-led) national approach, which was the preferred deployment mechanism among farmers and stakeholders. However, these conditions would also likely facilitate a voluntary vaccination programme. Limitations: Trust in those involved in delivering a vaccine programme and trust in the vaccine itself represent a crucial aspect of farmer and stakeholder attitudes towards cattle vaccination; however, this aspect was not covered by the EAST framework. Conclusion: EAST provided a novel framework for examining attitudes towards cattle vaccination with Cattle BCG, although we recommend incorporating a ‘trust’ component in future iterations

The role of public consultations in decision-making on future agricultural pesticide use: insights from European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy public consultation

This paper considers the role of public consultations in complex agri-environmental policy-making. Through a critical discourse analysis of submissions to the public consultation concerning the European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy, we examine the role of public consultations as a democratic process and the extent to which their non-deliberative nature advances solutions to contentious and complex challenges. We explore different perspectives around the future of agricultural pesticide use and find evidence of polarised submissions. Those in favour of reducing pesticides tend to argue on the grounds of planetary and human health, emphasizing that alternatives already exist and resistance to change results from a lack of political will. Those arguing against setting further restrictions on pesticide use, focus on food security and the lack of viable alternatives. Taking inspiration from Arnstein’s (1969) [A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224] ladder of participation and Fishkin’s (2011) [Making deliberative democracy practical. Chapter 4. In When the people speak: Deliberative democracy and public consultation (pp. 95–105] questions around what makes deliberative democracy practical, we argue that consultations are not merely ‘tokenistic’, but do appear to be inadequate where discourses are strongly polarised, as they are not sufficiently inclusive or thoughtful, using scientific findings only where these support pre-existing views. As such, we explore how other deliberative approaches may be more adequate for seeking legitimate solutions to complex challenges