Using scenarios to examine Using scenarios to examine farmer knowledge networks for farmer knowledge networks for bovine TB bovine TB Damian Maye¹, Rhiannon Naylor², Gareth Enticott 3 & James Kirwan¹ ¹ Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire ² Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester 3 School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University RGS-IBG Annual Conference. RGRG Session: Rural Animal and Plant Health. RGS, London, 27 th -29 th August, 2014
Presentation at the 2014 annual international conference of the Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers, held in London on August 27th-29th. The paper provided an analysis of farmer knowledge networks in relation to bovine TB and argues that understandings of farmers’ knowledge networks relating to animal disease control are weak. TB is used as a case study and scenario analysis to determine the networks that farmers would draw upon in particular situations. The research team developed four different scenarios to control TB in the future: a badger cull in hot spot areas, an oral badger vaccine, a cattle vaccine, and a range of measures. The findings confirmed the importance of certain so-called ‘influencers’, such as private vets and the NFU, as well as Defra. The influence of other farmers is also notable but the findings raise interesting questions about how farmers are influenced by their peers – typically more to compare practise / reactions than to obtain information. At the end of the paper these specific findings are related to more general questions about the merits of using scenarios and influence maps to inform TB and other complex policy areas and wider debates about ‘stakeholdership’ and ‘partnership’ governance.
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Using scenarios to examine farmer Using scenarios to examine farmer knowledge networks for bovine TBknowledge networks for bovine TB
Damian Maye¹, Rhiannon Naylor², Gareth Enticott3 & James Kirwan¹
¹ Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire
² Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester3 School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University
Context: new styles of animal Context: new styles of animal health governancehealth governance
• Knowledge co-production: interaction process between actors from different knowledge domains (Edelenbos et al., 2011).
• Neoliberalisation of animal health governance (Enticott et al., 2011; Maye et al., in press):– Bluetongue outbreak in 2008– Strategies of privatisation– ‘Cost & responsibility sharing’
Context: bTB and farmer Context: bTB and farmer knowledge networksknowledge networks
• For bTB discourses of cost and responsibility sharing now popular.
wildlife control companies – 2011).• Centrality of farmers to these new models.• Need to understand farmer knowledge
networks (first step).3
Farmer knowledge networksFarmer knowledge networks• Farmers’ knowledge networks explored to
understand attitudes towards various issues (e.g. Sligo and Massey, 2007; Morris, 2010).
• Value of local knowledge (Enticott, 2011).Oreszczyn et al. (2010) GM crop study:• Communities of practice• Networks of practice• Boundaries, shared objects, boundary agents
• To understand CoPs/NoPs need to examine how farmers view their own networks.
• Combine scenarios with influence maps.• Scenarios can elicit attitudes and beliefs
about situations (e.g. Quine et al., 2011); they are not forecasts / predictions but “plausible descriptions of possible (alternative) futures” (Quine, 2008).
6
bTB scenariosbTB scenarios
• Scenario 1: Rolling out a national badger cull in high risk areas (2014).
• Scenario 2: Oral badger vaccine (2019).• Scenario 3: Cattle vaccination (2023).• Scenario 4: A range of measures (badger
cull, badger vaccination, cattle vaccination) are available (2025).
Scenario 1 – national badger cull•Did not feel need to proactively seek information; first contact would be local NFU office; neighbouring farms – influential but not as a source of information:
“I would probably go along with it, especially if all my neighbours were doing it. I wouldn’t want to be the only one not doing it” (GT1087).
Scenario 3: cattle vaccination•Private vet most influential source; some farmers influenced by actions of farming neighbours but not all; drug companies not trusted.
“I think the vet would be quite important. They know about the data and things and injections and all that, so they are quite important...” (GT1023).