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Farmers’ preferences for reducing agricultural plastics: A discrete choice experiment among UK farmers.
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Researchers conducted a discrete choice experiment among northern England farmers to assess preferences for reducing agricultural plastic use, proposing monetary Sustainable Farming Incentive contracts with five attributes including contract length, payment levels, and three plastic-reducing actions within the post-Brexit UK agricultural policy framework.
Post-Brexit agricultural policy has generated an extensive range of new instruments to improve the sustainability of UK farming. However, none of these proposed policies deal with plastic pollution on UK farmlands. In this article, we use the UK's evolving policy context regarding farming payments to propose a monetary incentive whose environmental policy target is to change or reduce the use of -potentially harmful- agricultural plastics. We conducted a Discrete Choice Experiment among a sample of northern England farmers in which they considered two hypothetical Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) contract alternatives plus an opt-out alternative. The proposed SFI contracts include five attributes, including the contract length, the SFI payment, and three agricultural plastic-reducing actions: i) reduce the use of polymer-coated fertilizers, ii) reduce the use of plastic mulch film, and iii) reduce the use of silage films made only of virgin plastics. These actions can be accomplished at a lower, medium, and high level of compromise, and the payment varies with them. As agricultural plastics are essential for farm productivity, farmers are not asked to completely eliminate their use but replace them with more sustainable alternatives. Moreover, we used a within-farmers design to test the effect of a stringent enforcement strategy on their participation and willingness to accept SFI. We hypothesize relevant trade-offs between the contract's compromise level, the monetary payment offered, and farm and farmer-specific variables such as farm size, farming activities, and plastic and microplastic pollution awareness, among many others. Likewise, stringent enforcement may lead to a reduction in the stated participation and an increase in the monetary compensation needed to perform the indicated activities. This research may help develop incentive-compatible agricultural policies to reduce the usage of harmful agricultural plastics and improve our understanding of key factors explaining farmers’ adherence to new agri-environmental schemes in the UK.
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