Abstract
Fusarium species infection in wheat can lead to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) and contamination with mycotoxins. To fully exploit more recent insights into FHB and mycotoxin management, farmers might need to adapt their agronomic management, which can be stimulated through incentives. This study aimed to identify incentives to stimulate European farmers to adapt their agronomic management to reduce FHB and related mycotoxins in wheat. A questionnaire was distributed among 224 wheat farmers from Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, and the United Kingdom. Using the respondents’ data, Bayesian Network modelling was applied to estimate the probability that farmers would adapt their current agronomic management under eight different incentives given the conditions set by their farm and farmer characteristics. Results show that most farmers would adapt their current agronomic management under the incentives “paid extra when wheat contains low levels of mycotoxins” and “wheat is tested for the presence of mycotoxins for free”. The most effective incentive depended on farm and farmer characteristics, such as country, crop type, size of arable land, soil type, education, and mycotoxin knowledge. Insights into the farmer characteristics related to incentives can help stakeholders in the wheat supply chain, such as farmer cooperatives and the government, to design tailor-made incentive plans.
Highlights
Fusarium species infection in wheat can cause Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) and contamination with mycotoxins, leading to yield losses and a decrease in food quality and safety
Janssen, Mourits, van der Fels-Klerx and Oude Lansink [17] showed that only 50% of Dutch farmers used an effective integrated agronomic approach consisting of a Fusarium spp. resistant wheat variety, the application of fungicides during flowering, and crop rotation and/or ploughing [15,20]
This study aimed to identify which incentives stimulate different groups of European wheat farmers to adapt their agronomic management to prevent and control FHB and mycotoxin contamination in wheat
Summary
Fusarium species infection in wheat can cause Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) and contamination with mycotoxins, leading to yield losses and a decrease in food quality and safety. The occurrence of FHB and related toxins in wheat depends mainly on climate and local weather conditions [8,9,10] and farmers cope with these weather-induced risks by implementing different agronomic management measures to reduce FHB and mycotoxin contamination. Currently applied mycotoxin management measures might not fit the envisioned changes to food production as foreseen by the European Commission’s Green Deal [23] or “sustainable agriculture” [24]. These measures propagate lower pesticide use and conservation tillage, which contrasts the effective mycotoxin reduction approach of using fungicides throughout the whole cultivation period and (deep) ploughing to burry soil debris to reduce Fusarium spp. infection of the planted crop. A change in agronomic management might be needed to become more effective or to follow current technological innovations and/or political developments
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