Sustainable intensification of UK livestock production: a social scientific approach

This research will focus on the human factors that influence the management of diseases in domestic livestock. Specifically, it will analyse how and why livestock farmers make their decisions (usually in collaboration with advisors and in response to government regulation), how this affects disease control and, more widely, farm productivity and competitiveness, acceptance of agricultural innovation, and adoption of new technologies. Work will focus on bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and the opportunities and obstacles faced by government and farm advisors in communicating risk and encouraging change. This is an important case study: the incidence of bTB in England and Wales has been rising since the mid-1980s, the area in which bTB is considered 'endemic' has gradually expanded, and the cost of dealing with bTB is considerable to both taxpayers and livestock farmers. Further, bTB is a complex and highly politicised disease, making it important to explore social as well as scientific factors that influence the spread of disease and decisions regarding its management. The research will examine existing evidence of the opportunities and obstacles faced by government, advisors and farmers; identify and study successful examples of good communication of effective disease management practices; examine in detail the chain and methods of communication; and present the findings to government and the farming industry. The results will identify effective communication methods and disease management approaches that can be implemented in government policy and more successfully accessed and adopted by farmers.

The direct beneficiaries of the research will be the Animal and Plant Health Evidence and Analysis (APHEA) team and bovine tuberculosis (bTB) policy team within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Additional indirect benefits will accrue for Defra as a whole in the sharing of best practice between departments and the provision of training in innovative social science research methods for both social researchers and policy teams. Key stakeholder organisations will also be interested and potentially benefit from the empirical phases of the research; in particular, through the deployment of social network analysis in identifying key nodes and routes for knowledge exchange.

APHEA and bTB policy: This FRL fellowship will feed directly into the evidence and analysis-base for bovine tuberculosis, integrating social research understandings and methodologies into the policy-making process. The policy and evidence teams will benefit from understanding the social practices inherent in farmer decision-making and the translation of 'best practice' into 'farm practice'; it will provide critical evidence on communication strategies and effective use of knowledge 'brokers', leading to the development of new and improved communication tools, and the barriers and enablers to adopting certain practices/regulations on-farm. The applicant's knowledge of the policy context and previous experience of close working with these evidence and policy teams means that the benefits will start to accrue immediately; arguably, the translation of research into policy and practice will be more effective and more immediate than 'external' academic recommendations. Anticipated long-term impacts include an increase in the understanding and use of more diverse and innovative social research methodologies within Defra's evidence and analysis (internally and in commissioning academic research). This will be achieved via the provision of a number of co-training opportunities, organised by the applicant. Specifically, social network analysis has been employed within the Department of Justice and the Home Office, but has been largely absent from Defra's evidence and analysis.

Government agencies: Those agencies employed to provide predominantly natural science evidence (e.g. FERA and AHVLA) will benefit from receiving presentations and summary documents on project findings. Specifically, the FRL fellowship has the indirect benefit of embedding understandings of what social science is, the methodologies that are available and the questions that can be asked and answered to generate socially-informed research to respond to complex sustainability challenges. Natural science colleagues within government agencies (where social science is largely absent) and within academic institutions will benefit through a greater ability to cultivate more informed and 'successful' interdisciplinary research collaborations based upon greater understandings of social science approaches and methodologies.

Industry: Industry organisations, including the NFU, breed societies and veterinary practices will benefit from a greater understanding of knowledge transfer and their role in that process. For example, the NFU have recently re-established their network of 'county advisors' to reengage with the needs of their membership; an understanding of social practices and the social networks via which information is transferred and adopted would be very valuable in their assessment and approach to this 'reengagement'. There is also the potential for further work to demonstrate the utility of social network analysis in industry information campaigns and in agri-business decision-making and the generation of market intelligence. The applicant proposes to assess the potential for translating social network analysis into industry and business applications, leading to the preparation of a 'follow-on' fund application in the final year of the fellowship.