Countryside and Community Research Unit
Habitus and style of farming in explaining the adoption of environmental sustainability-enhancing behaviour
Final report
Bill Slee, David Gibbon and James Taylor
March 2006
1
Enhancing Sustainability at Farm Level
Countryside and Community Research Unit
______
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Janet Dwyer for valuable editorial guidance and Nick Lewis for preparing the diagrams. We would also like to thank Tony Pike from Defra for his editorial advice.
Bill Slee
David Gibbon
James Taylor
March 2006
Defra has commissioned and funded this study, but the views expressed in the report do not necessarily reflect Defra policy.
Executive Summary
This study explores the explanatory value of two related theoretical constructs - farming style and habitus - in better understanding the propensity of farmers in the UK to adopt practices that support enhanced environmental sustainability. Although arising from very different theoretical roots, these two concepts can be connected by the bridging concept of the Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (i.e. the framework within which actors in the sector exchange ideas and knowledge).
It is recognised that the configuration of the environmental concerns in UK farming is very different to that in some other parts of the world, where enhanced environmental sustainability is often more a prerequisite for business survival because of a threat to the resource base than a question of the voluntaristic drawdown of public funds to supply an environmental public good.
Why farming styles and habitus might matter?
The idea of a farming style was first propounded in the Netherlands and has been applied in a number of other parts of the world, but not widely in the UK. It comprises a holistic notion of how farmers organise their farming activity, wrapped up in a set of best practice considerations. Within any one enterprise, such as pig or dairy farming, a number of different styles can normally be identified. These different styles can be seen as both emic (expressing farmers’ own perceptions that there are different styles) or etic (reflecting the perception of outsiders about style differences which are not necessarily perceived this way by farmers).
Styles of farming are important because the characteristics of contrasting styles frame the room for manoeuvre of farmers who adopt them, i.e. they may be more or less constrained in their adaptive options depending on the style of farming that they practice.
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus can be seen as a given predisposition to act in particular ways, which comes about because of an individual’s history, culture, belief system etc. This predisposition to act is seen as taking place in a ‘field’ in which the practical outcomes of that predisposition to act are played out. The habitus provides a reference point for valuing ‘symbolic capital’, which are the social, cultural and material items of value to particular actors. As such, a habitus can be seen as one way of framing how a farmer behaves and accumulates symbolic capital.
Although habitus is seen as durable, it is not unchanging. How habitus changes is hotly contested. While the habitus of, say, migrants from rural areas to a city might undergo rapid transformation, the habitus of long-settled and embedded groups such as farmers might be expected to change much more slowly.
It is highly likely that the different habituses of different farmers are recursively connected to particular farming styles. Habitus provides the value system on which the socio-technical practices of a farming style are played out. Any attempt to enhance the sustainability of farming practices needs to recognise the way in which this notion of habitus could temper or constrain learning or adaptation, whilst also acknowledging its potential for change, over time or in different situations.
The concept of the Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) provides a framework within which to contextualise both differences in habitus and the scope for its change. If particular styles of farming and, where identified, their associated habituses, operate within a relatively fixed and impermeable AKIS, then these are likely to be more resistant to change, rather than enable the creation of effective networks through which changing values and practices can be transmitted.
Is there evidence helping to explain adoption of environmental sustainability?
An examination of the considerable number of studies on the uptake of environmental schemes by farmers offers an opportunity to apply ideas about farming styles and habitus in seeking to explain levels of participation and uptake.
Given the difficult business and policy environment in which farmers have operated in recent years, with the replacement of the long-standing modernisation (intensification) agenda with a new European model of agriculture, taking place at the same time as major income pressures in the UK, farmers may have limited resource and inclination to step outside their conventional farming practices.
A number of studies have been undertaken which investigate the propensity of farmers to adopt environment-enhancing practices. Farmers are often grouped into those with a productivist predisposition or those with post-productivist tendencies, although this dualism neglects the diversity of styles of farming and habituses within the productivist grouping. However, it is clear that there is a core of farmers, labelled variously ‘productivist’, ‘conservative’ and ‘traditional’ who are largely uninterested by optional-entry environmental enhancement schemes, even where material gain may be made from such engagement. The notion of being recognised as a ‘good farmer’ is almost completely disconnected from good environmental management. Further, studies attest to the durability of farmers’ values in engaging in certain farming behaviour, even where external ‘structural’ factors might suggest such strategic adjustment.
There is debate about whether entry to an environmental scheme can act as an attitude shifter, with farmers adjusting their habitus through scheme participation. Several studies have suggested that scheme design can be crucial in instigating changed thinking, with some schemes promoting largely opportunistic engagement and others requiring a more whole-farm perspective, which incorporates sustainability-enhancing practices across the whole farming enterprise mix.
Some studies have suggested that the ‘transaction costs’ of engaging with agri-environment schemes might put farmers off applying. This is likely to arise where substantial effort must be put in for discretionary schemes with modest reward.
A case is made for better education and training about such schemes, and, in particular, the promotion of types of learning which empower farmers to act, rather than leave them dependent on external environmental experts.
Organic farmers, FWAG groups and LEAF farmers represent three different groups that have factored in pro-environmental behaviour to their farming practices. The first two of these groups have been investigated in various studies. Most organic farmers are different in a number of ways to mainstream farmers and these differences are manifested in their habitus and farming style. FWAG members also exhibit a number of attitudinal and structural differences to mainstream farmers.
In relation to water pollution, evidence from the mid-1990s suggests the existence of one cohort of conservative farmers in denial about the existence of a problem and another that farmed less intensively and was aware of the problems of agriculturally induced water pollution. Later studies have indicated a need for farmers to be able to undertake rudimentary nutrient budgeting to improve their understanding of the problem.
In relation to woodland planting, studies have shown that the smaller monoactive agricultural businesses were the least likely to engage. Some assert that this differential response is conditioned by structural factors and others assert the importance of attitudinal factors.
The increased scope for what is termed ecological entrepreneurship may enable profit-oriented farmers to engage in environment-enhancing behaviour, as the market for green products and services expands. However, the farmers who appear most likely to engage in such activity may well have already taken steps towards environment-enhancing behaviour.
In almost all environment-enhancing activities, engagement challenges or at least modifies elements of the productivist project, which is at the core of farmers’ identity. To date, the engagers have often been either opportunistic participants or those from outwith the core of conservative farmers. Until such time as the symbolic capital of farming is altered to accommodate environmental concerns more fully, environment-enhancing engagement with existing and new schemes will be a slow process. The residual strength of the productivist self image of many farmers provides a barrier weakly permeable to new ideas relating to environmental sustainability, which are often viewed as external impositions on farmers rather than endogenously created adjustment strategies.
10 key conclusions
· Current habituses and farming styles represent adaptations that have developed over a long period of time and major changes in style or habitus are unlikely to take place rapidly. It is necessary to get a better understanding of the range of habituses and styles.
· Any improvement in environmental performance of farming will take time, with environmentally sensitive farming demanding different degrees of adjustment to different farming styles. Until the symbolic capital of farmers matches more closely that of policy makers or environmentally conscious public, the progress towards more environmentally sensitive farming will be an incremental process.
· Voluntary environmental schemes would be more successful which, wherever possible, complement or contribute to the symbolic capital of ‘core’ farmers, as well as pick up on the symbolic capital of new entrants to rural land management.
· Communication strategies with respect to environmental sustainability, need to recognise farmers’ symbolic capital and contribute to its enhancement. This requires recognition that a different ‘spin’ may need to be put on particular policy instruments, or even alteration and customisation of the instruments, to gain acceptance by different groups or styles of farmer.
· Easy-to-enter (in effect hard-to-refuse) environmental schemes with low transaction costs to farmers, especially new entrants, could deliver greater take-up than some existing schemes.
· It may be that farmers need to be engaged in environmental learning as a condition of receipt of grant aid, ensuring meaningful and targeted environmental education, as is already under way in some UK schemes such as Tir Gofal. Enhancing farmer knowledge in key areas of environmental concern e.g. nutrient budgeting, could also be supported by adopting tighter regulation and stronger sanctions against failure to comply with regulations regarding nutrient pollution. Additionally, effective incorporation of environmental agendas into formal agricultural education is important. A move of environmental management from its marginal position to greater centrality in agricultural education will enhance environmental understanding in agricultural further and higher education and in lifelong learning.
· Farmer-led or externally facilitated farmer group models can be suitable as a vehicle to inculcate environmental awareness, as long as the need to have skilled leadership of groups in relation to communication skills, knowledge transfer, local cultural sensitivity and environmental understanding is recognised. Experience suggests that effective facilitators need a mix of external insights and local acceptance.
· The development of new local networks that link farm development and environmental management can be successful, especially where there is a spatially identifiable problem that demands collective remedy or where there is explicit embodiment of environmental value in the resultant product(s) and clear evidence of environmental gain. The peer group-led approach to environmental enhancement by farmers, in which farmers are given a significant degree of freedom to engage in mutual learning, with its associated peer pressures, is a successful means of promoting and engaging in action to support environmental sustainability.
· Leading farmers could act as exemplars for positive environmental behaviour i.e. the conversion of a respected farmer to the environmental ‘mission’ endorses it for others, thereby creating a demonstration effect that will trickle down, albeit slowly, through farmer-to-farmer learning and lead to modifications to the symbolic capital of farmers.
· A closer congruence of the farmers’ symbolic capital and the public’s environmental aspirations is needed. To achieve this it may be necessary to create a clearer and more intelligible (to farmers) vision of the public good ‘value surface’ to which farmers could contribute by environment-enhancing behaviour, recognising that the public good value surface is almost completely invisible to the average farmer.
Table of Contents
1. Background to the study 7
1.1 Introduction 7
1.2 An integrative perspective 8
1.3 A focus on environmental sustainability 9
2 Styles of farming 11
2.1 Introduction to styles of farming 11
2.2 Examples of styles of farming 14
2.3 Why styles of farming might matter 17
3 Habitus 19
3.1 Introduction to habitus 19
3.2 Why habitus might matter 21
4 The Agricultural Knowledge and Information System 23
5 Key questions raised by the literature review 25
5.1 Introduction 25
5.2 The constitution and reproduction of styles of farming and predisposing factors to change 25
5.3 Room for manoeuvre under different farming systems and the ease/difficulty of changes which increase environmental sustainability 26
5.4 The relationship between habitus and farming styles 28
5.5 The drivers of habitus change 29
5.6 What is the role of the AKIS in habitus change? 31
6 The evidence base on farming and the adoption of environmental practice 35
6.1 Introduction 35
6.2 Attitudes towards Productionism and Post-Productionism 35
6.3 Environmental Stewardship 40
6.4 FWAG membership 44
6.5 Organic Farming 44
6.6 Diffuse pollution control 46
6.7 Woodland 47
6.8 Ecological entrepreneurship 47
6.9 Summary 48
7 Can habitus and style of farming help explain adoption of environmental sustainability–enhancing behaviour by farmers? 50
7.1 General conclusions 50
7.2 10 key conclusions 54
1. Background to the study
1.1 Introduction
The concern for the development of a more sustainable farming industry has been brought into sharp focus in recent years by a farming crisis of considerable magnitude. Set alongside a strong UK desire to see major changes in the operation of the CAP, two major livestock disease incidents (BSE and Foot and Mouth Disease) damaged export markets at a time when the strength of the pound against the Euro and many other currencies made profitable export of farm produce difficult and imports relatively cheap. A contemporaneous shake-out associated with deregulation in some sectors, such as dairying, coupled with the increased power of upstream and downstream industries, with their associated oligopolisitic market structures, has hit farming profitability. Finally, the same strong pound that affected export markets also reduced the value of subsidies from the CAP, significantly lowering farm incomes. The compound effect of low incomes and a number of specific livestock sector crises greatly damaged confidence in the industry. Farmers have become increasingly alienated from both government and wider society, with adverse ramifications on their ability to respond to new market opportunities and policies. This was recognised by government who commissioned the group led by Sir Donald Curry to develop a strategic vision for sustainable food and farming in England and more widely in the UK.