Drivers of environmentally friendly farming distribution and their impact on sustainability performance at different scales: a mixed methods approach

英国退出欧盟是一个改革农业政策的机会，以更好地与可持续发展目标保持一致，并解决农业环境计划（AES）在解决现代农业对环境的影响方面的局限性（Helm, 2017）。政府的改革目标强调“公共资金用于公共产品”，以及通过合作管理进行景观规模行动的必要性，这些围绕农民作为公共产品提供者和景观规模行动的想法在新政策制度中特别有争议和多变（DEFRA, 2023; Harvey, 2023）。我的研究发现了将这些原则应用于提高农业可持续性的挑战，因此为农民、政策制定者和学者提供了及时的见解。在研究农民收养行为驱动因素的许多方法中，试图理解农民决策背后更深层次含义的研究人员越来越关注农民的身份、地位和“好农民”应该做什么的文化理想（Burton, 2004; Cusworth & Dodsworth, 2021）。我通过访谈将这些概念应用于调查农民如何理解作为公共产品提供者并与其他农民合作的想法。这项工作强调了“公共产品”概念是如何被农民适应的，以符合他们的身份和对他们角色的期望，以及有针对性的关系和信息交换对于解决景观规模的公共产品交付与既定农民身份之间的潜在冲突将是重要的。除了这些访谈之外，我还使用了空间分析来展示英国的AES参与是如何在地区一级聚集的，并提出了推动这种聚集的因素。为了进一步研究采用分布的驱动因素与区域可持续性的关系，我结合了情景分析、影响图和网络分析，以评估再生农业（在英国处于农业变革的前沿）的采用速度和分布如何影响英格兰东南部的可持续性。该研究确定了解释再生农业的高集群式采用如何提高区域可持续性的关键途径，显示了信息共享的重要性以及在不同尺度上连接可持续性方面的关系。这是第一次将这种混合方法应用于农业可持续性研究，使我能够为这一主题带来新的视角。因此，我的研究对知识做出了有价值的贡献，这个项目是一个机会，以确保这些发现达到他们想要的受众，并影响关于英国农业未来的讨论。我确定的5篇候选期刊文章将在不同学科之间建立新的联系，提供可以为英国脱欧后农业政策的实施提供信息的建议，并促进我们对替代农业方法对区域可持续性的贡献的理解——这是文献中一个被忽视的话题，主要关注农场层面的可持续性（Inwood等人，2018；nogusamas等人，2019）。我的研究还强调了在研究替代农业方法的采用和可持续性表现时考虑不同空间尺度的重要性，因此该项目将涉及有限的进一步研究（项目的20%，即2.5个月），调整我的方法以纳入多尺度方法，这将推动农业可持续性研究这一前沿的扩展。为了最大限度地发挥这项工作的影响，我还将参加至少两次会议，以扩大我的网络，分享我的发现，并创建一个基于网络的地图工具，以互动的方式向更广泛的受众展示我的研究主题。此外，我将继续在与我的研究相关的领域进行教学，并接受培训，以支持我作为早期职业研究员的专业发展。

The UK's withdrawal from the European Union was an opportunity to reform agricultural policy to better align with sustainability goals and address limitations of agri-environment schemes (AES) in addressing environmental impacts of modern agriculture (Helm, 2017). The government's aims for reform emphasised 'public money for public goods' and the need for landscape-scale action via cooperative management, and these ideas around farmers as public good providers and landscape-scale actions have been particularly contested and changeable aspects of new policy regime (DEFRA, 2023; Harvey, 2023). My research identified challenges in applying these principles to improving agricultural sustainability, and so has timely insights to offer farmers, policy makers, and academics.Of the many approaches to studying drivers of farmer adoption behaviours, researchers trying to understand the deeper meaning behind farmer decisions increasingly focus on farmer identities, status, and cultural ideals of what a 'good farmer' should be doing (Burton, 2004; Cusworth & Dodsworth, 2021). I used interviews to apply these concepts in investigating how farmers interpret the idea of being providers of public goods and doing so in collaboration with other farmers. This work highlighted how the 'public goods' concept was adapted by farmers to align with their identities and expectations of their role, and that targeting relationships and information exchange will be important to resolve potential conflicts between landscape-scale public good delivery and established farmer identities. Alongside these interviews, I used spatial analysis to show how AES participation in England is clustered at the district level, and to suggest factors driving this clustering. To further study how drivers of adoption distribution relate to regional sustainability, I combined scenario analysis, impact mapping, and network analysis, to assess how the rate and distribution of regenerative farming (which stands on the frontier of agricultural change in the UK) adoption could impact sustainability in south-east England. This identified key pathways to explain how the high, clustered adoption of regenerative farming can enhance regional sustainability, showing the importance of information sharing and relationships in linking aspects of sustainability at different scales. This is the first time this mix of methods has been applied in agricultural sustainability research, allowing me to bring a fresh perspective to this topic.My research therefore made a worthwhile contribution to knowledge, and this project is an opportunity to ensure these findings reach their desired audiences and influence discussion about the future of farming in England. The 5 candidate journal articles I have identified will make new connections between different disciplines, provide recommendations that could inform implementation of post-Brexit agricultural policy, and advance our understanding of the contribution of alternative farming approaches to regional sustainability - a neglected topic in the literature, which has focused on farm-level sustainability (Inwood et al., 2018; Nogués et al., 2019). My research also highlighted the importance of considering different spatial scales in studying the adoption and sustainability performance of alternative farming approaches, so this project will involve limited further research (20% of the project, i.e., 2.5 months), adapting my methods to incorporate a multi-scale approach, which will drive expansion of this frontier in agricultural sustainability research. To maximise impact of this work, I will also attend at least 2 conferences to widen my network and share my findings and create a web-based mapping tool to present my research themes in an interactive manner for wider audiences. Additionally, I will continue teaching in areas relevant to my research and undertake training to support my professional development as an early career researcher.