On-Farm Conservation: Get Farmers on Side First

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Policy makers, extension officers and researchers may have more success in getting farmers to adopt conservation practices by identifying the factors that motivate farmers first, before formulating policy or design extension programs.

Professor David Pannell of the University of Western Australia, one of the authors of a recent review paper on the subject, says conservation practices such as lime application to treat acid soils are more readily adopted by farmers because they provide tangible and measurable benefits. By contrast, some measures to counter dryland salinity can be difficult to trial and less attractive than current practices.

'For policy people, we …