Advisors Supporting Farmers in Climate Action

How can an advisor best support a farmer as they implement climate mitigation and adaptation measures? A useful first step would be to increase the farmer’s awareness of the need for climate action, followed by the completion of a GHG audit, to establish the baseline farm GHG emissions. Once the audit is completed, the advisor and farmer can then identify areas for action and agree an action plan. Following this, it will be up to the farmer to implement the chosen actions, and for the advisor to continue to support the farmer in their transition. It is likely that advisors will work with farmers at different stages of the innovation-decision process and that the advisor’s role will change depending on where the farmer is during the process. Advisors will make an impact through a combination of advisory activities, focusing on relevant and user friendly content, which stimulates farmer learning and motivates their decision to apply new knowledge.

The Climate Farm Demo Top Tips for advisors supporting farmers in the uptake of climate mitigation and adaptation measures are listed below:
1. Get to know the farmers you are trying to influence. A range off actors, such as age, access to finance and attitude towards risk, impact the willingness of farmers to change their farming practices. Don’t forget the personal touch – make the connection with the farmer, and their family. And most importantly, listen to the farmer’s arguments, fears and wishes.
2. Highlight the positives including good practices and the progress made by the farmer, without being afraid of calling out the areas for improvement.
3. Keep it simple. Farmers need to know that the recommended solutions are backed up by science, that the new approaches work to reduce GHG emissions…but don’t necessarily need to know all the scientific details.
4. Frame your messages carefully, highlighting the benefits to the farmer (profitability, productivity, work-life balance) of adopting climate mitigation or adaptation measures. Farmers tend to implement climate-beneficial measures due to other farm-related benefits.
5. Always prepare before meeting with the farmer. Use available benchmarking tools/ GHG assessment tools to understand the farm’s current GHG emissions profile. Review other available farm performance data also.
6. Provide ongoing support through (short) visits, phone consultations, membership of a WhatsApp group, emails, invitations to events etc.
7. Facilitate farmer-to-farmer learning. Farmer groups help farmers to identify solutions and solve problems, while allowing farmers to support one another. Consider forming a group of “like minded” farmers to discuss more sustainable farming practices or include the topic in existing group discussions.
8. Prepare for a long-time horizon: it may be a number of years before there are measurable environmental and economic outcomes. Also, tackle the adoption of one or two mitigation practices at a time and avoid identifying a list of actions to be taken.
9. Familiarise yourself with currently available rewards and incentives, available from Government/ EU or from the marketplace. Be able to highlight what is required of the farmer to avail of these.
10. Consider what else you can do to create an enabling environment that facilitates the farmer taking climate action.