Benchmarking Best Practice using machine learning approaches. (ENRA 2025 poster)

Reform of Scottish Agricultural policies imply environmental objectives are incorporated within traditional goals of food security and farm income viability. However, setting realistic but ambitious targets across economic, environmental, and biophysical dimensions remains a major challenge for policymakers. We present work using four years of the Farm Business Survey data showing the use of estimation approaches to identify best practices across income, environmental and food security domains. This covers a range of methods, from estimation-based approaches to novel applications of machine learning. Robust measures of progress are essential for cost-effective policy implementation and this poster will outline the implications for future policy analysis .