Trust Versus Content in Multi-functional Land Management: Assessing Soil Function Messaging in Agricultural Networks

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Science
• Environmental Science
• Social Science

Background:

• Increasing land sustainability demands require extensive knowledge across diverse scientific fields.
• Network analysis offers insights into optimizing targeted interventions for land management.
• Agri-environmental governance faces challenges in effectively disseminating knowledge for sustainable practices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore networks related to key soil functions using mixed-methods in Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
• To identify opportunities for improving knowledge transfer and uptake for sustainable land management.
• To analyze the role of farmers and other actors in agri-environmental governance networks.

Main Methods:

• Employed a mixed-methods approach combining social network analysis (SNA) and surveys.
• Investigated networks concerning crucial soil functions in case studies across three European countries.
• Analyzed the structure of governance networks and the flow of information among actors.

Main Results:

• Observed diverse and contrasting networks shaped by local conditions, sustainability challenges, and governance structures.
• Identified farmers as central actors within the agri-environmental governance network.
• Found low acceptance of messages from many central actors, indicating a need to enhance network utilization for sustainability.

Conclusions:

• The effectiveness of sustainable land management is influenced by the structure of governance networks and message acceptance.
• Message source significantly impacts the implementation of farm management actions.
• Proposed two pathways for enhancing farmer adoption of multi-functional land management: increasing trust and improving message bundling by trusted actors.