A window into land managers’ preferences for new forms of agri-environmental schemes: Evidence from a post-Brexit analysis

Abstract

Securing the provision of environmental public goods from agriculture is central to addressing the critical challenge of ensuring global food security while halting ecosystem degradation. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are considered to have a key role to play in supporting the transition to more sustainable ways of producing food. Existing evidence suggests that farmers are generally willing to enrol in AES for the delivery of environmental features, but robust policy support requires further exploration of land managers’ preferences and how these interplay with contract features to achieve higher environmental targets. We undertook a discrete choice experiment with land managers in post-Brexit UK, with what can be considered a ‘benchmark’ sample of younger AES-inclined land managers. This provides a window into the future of the UK farming landscape, but also, given the revision of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and other international discussions, it also provides insights into land managers’ preferences for new contract features more widely. Our results suggest that (such type of) land managers are likely to be receptive to a transition to result-based, collaborative schemes supporting landscape-wide interventions in alignment with net zero agendas. These interventions could be done in exchange for levels of compensation similar to current levels. While this raises promise, our results also emphasize challenges, particularly to attract those less generally AES-prone land managers. Payments levels probably need to remain close to the current ones (not lower), farmers’ awareness and support for net-zero agendas need to be reinforced and more interaction between land managers and policy makers will be needed.