Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENFASYS (ENcouraging Farmers towards sustainable farming SYstems through policy and business Strategies)
Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31
ENFASYS aims to stimulate a just and robust transition to sustainable, productive, climate-neutral, biodiversity friendly and resilient farming systems (SFS) by improved policies and business strategies that encourage farmers to change their production systems. In current food systems, farmers are challenged by multiple lock-ins that prevent them to move to SFS. To overcome this and thus to support the Green Deal and in particular the Farm to Fork ambitions, strengthening public strategies (policies) should go hand in hand with strengthening private strategies (business models, social innovations). To reach this aim, ENFASYS goals are (1) an improved understanding of lock-ins and levers in farming and food systems;(2) an improved understanding of behavioural factors of farmers, consumers and other food chain actors;(3) more and better evidence on the potential effectiveness of interventions;(4) a more structured approach to link knowledge to action. To do so, ENFASYS will frame current transitions to SFS and screen 160 cases for current interventions. Through systems analysis, behavioural and experimental studies, ENFASYS will uncover lockins from a systemic and behavioural point of view. The potential of policy and business interventions will be tested in 12-15 countries across Europe through experimental studies (discrete choice experiments, framed field experiments and randomized trials) and system dynamic modelling. To link systemic and behavioural insights to action and to understand the impact of the interventions on systems level, results of these studies will be combined into system and behavioural based theories of change. Together with stakeholders and enriched by the research results, ENFASYS will co-design policy mixes, business strategies and social innovations and stimulate their implementation. Strategic communication, dissemination, exploitation and tailored capacity building towards all our target groups, will maximize ENFASYS’ impact.
In RP2, many research activities have been executed and finalized. First, in 10 case studies, the systems analysis of systemic lock-ins and levers and the construction of causel loop diagrammes was performed. The 10 causal loop diagrammes were transformed into 3 thematic system dynamic models. The causal loop diagrammes provide a systemic pictures of interactions within the farming systems and identify reinforcing and feedback loops, thereby giving insights into critical points in the systems where to intervene. Second, in 10 countries a farmer survey was executed to assess farmer behavioural readiness to change in response to 12 different types of interventions. The survey assessed farmers' perceived acceptability and effectiveness of these interventions. Clusters of farmers were identified and associated with farm and farmer characteristics. Third, in 12 countries a consumer-citizen survey was conducted assessing consumers' and citizens' behaviour related to sustainable food consumption and production and their preferences for agrifood policies. This led to more isnights into consumption behaviour and citizen engagement. Fourth, in 9 case studies, behaviourally-informed systems-based theories of change were developed in a participatory way. The ToCs highlight possible leverage points and actions to undertake to move certain target variables (e.g. adoption of sustainable farming practices) into a desired direction. Fifth, in participatory workshops, potential policy mixes were identified to move farmers to more sustainable practices. In a second series of workshops, the policy design space was assessed, i.e. the willingness and capacity of the policy environment to implement the identified policy mixes. Sixth, participatory business model workshops were done, in which stakeholders identified business strategies that could stimulate a move to more sustainable farming systems in a just transition approach. Seventh, a quasi-experimental approach investigated the potential of information-type of nudges to stimulate adoption of more environmentally-friendely production practices. Results show that information-type nudges could be effective but that this depends on both the context and the specific practices that they intend to stimulate.
The core parts where our results go beyond the state of the art are (1) the farmer survey, where we assess farmer readiness to act upon a wide range of possible interventions, whereas most prior studies assess factors that explain farmer behaviour without assessing which intervention could actually change farmer behaviour; (2) the transformation of causal loop diagrammes into thematic system dynamic models, which brings in the dynamic aspects and quantifies the otherwise qualitative understanding resulting from a systems analysis and the construction of causal loop diagrammes; (3) the participatory development of behaviourally-informed systems-based theories of change, which go beyond a diagnostic analysis but aim to develop actionable strategies and plans.