Policy Approaches to Environmental Practice in Agriculture: a review of international literature and recommendations for application in New Zealand

Abstract

The New Zealand agriculture sector is facing ever growing demands that it produce verifiable environmental benefits. These demands raise the pressures on farmers to adopt and follow sound practices and technologies. This report provides a review of diverse approaches—documented in the international literature—to promoting or encouraging agri-environmental practice in the agriculture sector. The intent of the review is not to identify a single, optimal policy to address all environmental issues. Rather, it develops the argument that the reported success of given approaches is highly contingent on the context in which they were applied. Furthermore, there is fairly consistent evidence that the achievement of widespread adoption of agri-environmental practice (where it involves more than the fine tuning existing management systems) is dependent on the emergence of a shared (or social) sense of responsibility and willingness to value the outcomes of the practice.