Australia

Synthesis of the agrifood systems’ hidden costs analysis in the six FABLE country case studies

This chapter summarizes the main findings about hidden costs in agrifood systems across six countries, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, and the United Kingdom building on the results from SOFA 2023, the FABLE Consortium, and the Food System Economic Commission (FSEC) initiative. While the fact that unhealthy diets currently trigger the biggest hidden costs in most countries was a surprise for some stakeholders, there was a consensus that this is an important and growing issue that urgently needs to be addressed. Changing diets and increasing agricultural productivity have the largest impact on reducing the agrifood system’s hidden costs in the future, but implementing an integrated strategy that can also target environmental protection has the largest benefits. Some hidden costs related to undernourishment are covered in the analysis, but they do not accurately reflect the size of the problem, particularly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Better local datasets should be used in hidden costs computation for GHG emissions and land cover change, and thresholds for poverty and undernourishment should be aligned with national statistics. There are challenges to communicating the complexity of the hidden costs method, but this topic is gaining momentum for policy planning, and several governments are already either utilizing or planning to develop similar metrics, so this analysis was a timely exercise.

The role of behavioural factors and opportunity costs in farmers’ participation in voluntary agri-environmental schemes: A systematic review

Agri-environmental schemes (AESs) are increasingly implemented to promote the adoption of environmentally friendly practices by farmers. We use a systematic review to explore the role of behavioural factors and opportunity costs in farmers’ decisions to participate in AESs in Australia, Europe and North America. Behavioural factors influence how farmers value and perceive options, while opportunity costs relate to farmers’ forgone utility when choosing to participate in schemes. We synthesise insights from 79 articles and over 700 factors explaining the participation in AESs. We find that a set of behavioural factors seem consistently connected to participation, including agricultural training, advice and having positive attitudes towards AESs. Moreover, several factors related to opportunity costs also have a rather consistent relationship with AES participation, including market conditions, implementation efforts, profitability, and management and contract flexibility. However, many relationships of behavioural factors and opportunity costs with AES participation are not as consistent and generalizable as sometimes portrayed and require context-specific interpretation. Those factors with mixed results can still provide insights into farmers’ participation decisions as several of them are either ‘positively and insignificantly’ or ‘negatively and insignificantly’ related to participation, such as environmental attitude, trust and farm size. These results suggest that their relationship with AES participation depends on other factors or the setting, highlighting interactions and raising important new research questions. Overall, our results provide several entry points for both researchers and policy-makers, highlighting uncertainties in relationships between factors and participation that should be considered when designing policies.

International comparison of extension agent objectives and construction of a typology