Context

The government recognises the need to both build the resilience of trees to withstand biosecurity threats (such as pests and diseases) and to support target audiences like farmers in managing the resilience of their trees and woods by providing them with improved guidance and tools.  

Although there is already lots of information about trees aimed at farmers, some important topics are missing, and the existing resources do not always highlight the link between tree resilience and the success of farm businesses. As well as addressing these gaps, it is also key to understand how to communicate this information effectively, and in this regard, previous research has identified the importance of knowledge intermediaries (people or organisations that help to connect experts or evidence with people who benefit from the information).  

Research aims and objectives

Aim:

Develop our understanding of farmers’ motivations for improving the health and resilience of trees on their farms. Collaborate with farmers and knowledge intermediaries to develop and test a small number of knowledge interventions. These will be designed to tap into those motivations to enhance farmers’ understanding of the benefits of managing farm trees for their health and resilience and build their capabilities to enable them to do this.

Objectives:

• Raise awareness of tree health issues and their impact on the farm business amongst target farmer audiences.  

• Understand what farmers need to know and how they can make changes.  

• Develop and test 1-3 simple tools or programmes intended to provide farmers with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to act, involving and collaborating with existing farmer networks.  

• Collaborate with key knowledge intermediaries to develop and communicate these tools.  

• Evaluate the project approach.  

Expected outcomes

• Improved understanding of why some farmers, under some circumstances, don’t plant or manage farm trees with their longer-term health and resilience in mind, and what support is needed to close the gap between knowledge and action.  

• Clearer insight into how to work effectively with farmers to plan and support positive change. 

• Assessment of how effective farmer champions (a type of knowledge intermediary) are in addressing the gaps between knowledge and action for tree health and resilience.  

• Better understanding of the effectiveness of new tools and approaches co-designed with farmers and key knowledge intermediaries to address knowledge-action gaps in managing farm trees for resilience.  

• Delivery partners use the lessons learnt from the project in their ongoing farmer-facing engagement and use the messaging around tree resilience in their knowledge interventions aimed at farmer audiences.  

• Farmer champions actively communicate and share knowledge about managing farm trees for their health and resilience, including promoting the novel tools and approaches designed in this project, within the farming community – both during and after participating in the project.  

• More farmers understand the link between the resilience of farm trees and the success of the farm business.  

• More action is taken by farmers to improve the long-term health and resilience of their farm trees.