Farm Advisory Service: enhanced monitoring and evaluation

3. Actions

3.1. Reason for seeking support

Table 1 shows the main reasons respondents gave for seeking support. The first three reasons listed from the top of Table 1together with an 'other – please specify' option were given to respondents as options during their interview. The other reasons were proactively cited by farmers themselves. The most common reasons for seeking support were to improve the businesses' financial performance (31%) and for environmental improvement (including improving the environmental aspects of the farm and reducing carbon emissions) (24%).

Table 1: Main reason for seeking support (n=116 | single response)

3.2. Action taken

Table 2 shows the extent to which respondents had undertaken the actions or recommendations made in the reports they received through the FAS. The left hand column gives the different response options. The overall figure is calculated for all the reports received. So, for example, for 13% of the reports received for all types of support, all of the actions recommended in the report were said to have been taken. The extent of action taken is also reported individually for those who received a report for ILMP, specialist advice and carbon audits.

Table 2: Extent to which actions have been taken

This table shows that for only a small proportion of reports (10%), respondents had not and did not intend to take any of the actions suggested. For the majority of reports (74%), respondents either had or were intending to take some of the actions or to an extent. For an additional small proportion of reports (16%), respondents were very committed and had or intended to take all the suggested actions. The following sections explore some of the reasons for this.

Variation in the responses by support type (ILMP, specialist advice and carbon audit) was not large. For a slightly higher proportion of specialist advice reports, there was a future intention to take some actions or to an extent (rather than having already done so), compared to ILMP and carbon audit reports. This may reflect the timing of receipt of the specialist advice reports (since these will necessarily have been done later than ILMP reports). It could also be that the specialist nature of the advice requires more time to implement than recommendations from other types of support.

3.3 Reasons for taking or not taking actions

Figure 1 shows for all the reports issued, the proportion who agreed that particular reasons contributed to their decision to take actions. For about six in ten reports, respondents were planning on taking the actions anyway. For about eight in ten reports, respondents thought the action was easy to take. In very high proportions of reports, almost all, respondents thought that the actions would be beneficial to the business and would have a positive environmental impact. This data has been analysed by support type (ILMP, specialist advice, carbon audit) but there is little variation.

Figure 1: Reasons contributing to the decision to take actions, % of reports (n=171 reports | multiple response)

Table 3 below shows for all the reports issued, the proportion who agreed that particular reasons contributed to their decision not to take some actions. Almost two thirds (63%) said the actions would be too costly. About half (46%) said they had insufficient time to implement the actions. About a third (34%) thought the actions were not necessary for their business. A small proportion (14%) said they did not understand why the action had been recommended.

Table 3: Percentage who agreed with this reason for why they would not be taking some actions (multiple response)

There was limited variation by support type. A lack of time seemed to be a factor more frequently for specialist advice than ILMP and carbon audits. In relation to carbon audits, the proportion who said a lack of understanding of why the action had been recommended and/or who did not think the action was necessary was higher than for ILMP and specialist advice.

Some respondents made some other comments about why they would not be taking actions. These have been summarised below. These were all individual responses except where indicated.

• Action was not suitable for my business (2 responses)
• Action was too difficult to implement (2 responses)
• Action was impractical (2 responses)
• The risk was too high
• Business changed direction so it was not relevant
• The farmer had insufficient interest to do the further research necessary to implement the actions
• They are waiting to decide depending upon the future direction of the business
• They were not successful in applying for the grant they required
• Chose the easiest, cheapest options to satisfy the beef efficiency scheme requirements
• The sheep grant was no longer available
• The advisers had been given inaccurate information by the previous owners of the farm which meant it was not appropriate for the new farmers to implement all the actions.

3.4 Attribution of action taken

About a third of respondents for all reports (34%) said that they were very or somewhat unlikely to have taken the actions without the support of the FAS. This was similar across support types.

Respondents who said that they were very or somewhat unlikely to have taken the actions without the support of the FAS were then asked how the support helped them to take actions. The findings are given in Table 4. The support was shown to be helping in a range of ways. Similar proportions (around a third) indicated that the support helped in the ways outlined in the options given (shown in the left hand column of the table).

Table 4: % who agreed that the support helped in this way

There was some variation by support type, although these are relatively small sub-samples and so the findings are only indicative. These suggest that:

• Specialist advice was less likely to provide the idea for action (compared to ILMP or carbon audits).
• ILMP may be particularly helpful in helping farmers to decide which action to take and how to take an action (relative to specialist advice and carbon audits).