Survey of Environmental Stewardship agreement holders

Defra is seeking the opinions of farmers and land managers to aid the future development of Environmental Stewardship (ES), and has appointed Hyder Consulting and ADAS to conduct a survey.

This research expands upon work undertaken in the Mid Term Evaluation of the Rural Development Programme for England, and other work on ES underway at Defra.

The survey is in three components. Section 1 explores attitudes and behaviours, such as:

• Reasons for joining ES / renewing agreements in ES;
• Drivers for any changes to the combination of options selected, at renewal stage;
• Views on main environmental benefit of their agreement; and
• Explore deadweight i.e. behaviours and practices that would be implemented in the absence of ES funding.

Section 2 tests participants’ reaction to various hypothetical scenarios regarding the future of ES. For example, concerning the selection and implementation of options, or arrangements for on-farm monitoring.

Finally, Section 3 asks straight-forward questions on wider business characteristics. The results will then be compared to a similar survey of farmers not in ES.

A letter has been sent to potential survey participants, providing them with the opportunity to ‘opt out’ of the telephone interviews. The interviews started on Monday 28 February, and conclude once 500 have been successfully concluded, around Friday 25 March. Each interview will be conducted by experienced professionals. It will last approximately 20 minutes, and is anonymous: no responses will be attributable to individuals.  The survey sample is intended to achieve the following structure:

• 250 responses from those in Entry Level / Organic Entry Level Stewardship (ELS / OELS);
• 150 responses from those in Higher Level Stewardship and ELS or OELS; and
• 100 responses from members of Environmental Stewardship (but not UELS) within the Severely Disadvantaged Areas.

The survey is being conducted with the support of Defra and Natural England.

For any queries please contact John Allsopp, RDPE Programme Team 0207 238 5311 or Sarah Milne, Project Manager, 0117 372 1200.

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