Description

Estimating future behaviours is a key uncertainty in policy planning. Farming practice adoption work has mainly focused on farmers, often ignoring how the practice would fit in the farm operations and the role of policy and industry. We are investigating how the ADOPT tool (https://adopt.csiro.au/), which considers these aspects, can be useful in policy planning and how, and whether, it can aid comparative discussions on policy interventions. We selected two practices of high interest for Scottish Government: cover crops and 3-NOP. The expert workshops confirmed that the tool can greatly support a detailed discussion on the barriers of and opportunities for uptake but is too uncertain for quantitative modelling. Policy workshops participants indicated that the discussion of policy interventions were very helpful, both to understand the technicalities of the practices and to think about the policy mechanisms in detail. More practices will be examined, based on demand from Scottish Government.