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6. Overall Conclusions and Recommendations
6.1 Effectiveness
- The programme has been effective in bringing about business improvements on the Monitor Farms themselves, amongst community group members and in the wider farming community who are not directly involved in the programme.
- The majority of the benefits focus around enterprise performance and efficiency and the financial improvements will have helped in improving the sustainability of the businesses involved.
- We estimate the benefits of the programme on the 5 farms and community groups studied at £585,308 after taking account of deadweight which amounts to £6.5 for every £1 of programme spend. If all the other consequent changes which the community group members told us about could have been fully estimated, the benefits would be significantly greater
- The programme has achieved a high degree of penetration in the farming community in Scotland with 78% with no direct involvement, aware of the programme.
- 12% of programme non-members have implemented changes to their business and further 7% intended to do so. The changes particularly focused on livestock performance, animal health and welfare and grassland management and performance
- The farming press has been particularly influential in disseminating knowledge about the programme with 91% citing this as their source.
- The programme has enabled those participating to get to know each other better, and as result, sharing knowledge is likely to be more commonplace as a result. This is a view held by all involved.
- The management of the process on the farms has evolved over time moving more consistently towards the appointment of a chairman and committee or board. This is a positive move leading to greater clarity and focus to the programme.
- Currently the overall objectives appear rather vague and community group members seem uncertain of what they are, although it is recognised that objectives need to be able to be flexed in the light of changing market or regulatory drivers.
- Monitoring of individual enterprises and for the farm as a whole is taking place although there is variability in its consistency and approach. Although there is benchmarking of enterprises taking place, there appears to be limited activity around monitoring the overall impact of the changes on the Monitor Farms themselves and we found none in regard to the changes on members' farms. Facilitators recognise that improvements could be made to how monitoring could be undertaken and communicated. If this could be achieved it would go some way to address concerns amongst funders of the business and economic benefits of the programme.
- The Facilitators were generally seen to be doing a good job although there clearly is some wide variation in approach and ability to fully engage group members in taking part in the learning process.
- External specialists were generally welcomed although there were mixed views on the degree to which they should be used. There were also some concerns expressed regarding the ability of some to be wholly relevant to the context and location and that a wider diversity of specialists could be used to create a greater challenge to members' current outlook regarding the future approaches to the business of farming.
6.2 Potential to Deliver Other Objectives
- There is no consensus on the desirability or practicality of using the Monitor Farm for other knowledge transfer purposes despite the interest of some funders that the approach should be more stretching in the issues it covers.
- There may be some potential for further integrating environmental messages and for those who are in areas with environmental designations this is already occurring. In these instances it is largely related to publicly funded financial incentives or regulation.
- To take this further will require careful development recognising embedded values and beliefs of farmers who do not see environmental management as integral to farming in the future. It will also be necessary to ensure that Facilitators are sympathetic to these messages and can identify the benefits and costs of not adopting more environmental management practices. These issues surrounding communication of environmental improvements in this study are common with studies elsewhere.
- The Monitor Farm approach is not considered generally suitable for promoting farm diversification as such opportunities are highly location specific and strongly influenced by personal and family objectives. They also lend themselves less to practical demonstration and it would be difficult to get a consistent local group with common interest.
- In terms of social sustainability the approach has yielded benefits in extending their peer and business networks. There is some limited evidence that this had extended into domains other than knowledge exchange through co-operative activity taking place. These indications provide a platform on which to explore more co-operative ventures.
6.3 Potential for Improving the Programme
- There is evidence that the selection of farms from those who are seen as the best performers may mean that the impact of improvements may not always be readily demonstrated and may also restrict the audience to whom the programme is seen as relevant. There is merit in considering a wider diversity of performance amongst the Monitor Farms where even greater improvement can be demonstrated and wider constituency of farmers attracted. A caveat is that these farms should be drawn from those who although may not be seen as top performers, are respected among their peers.
- There is evidence that more groundwork needs to be carried out by Facilitators in understanding the Monitor Farm business and in working with a Chairman and small committee in setting SMART objectives, targets and a monitoring framework.
- To enable the impact of the programme to be assessed more readily in the future a common basis for measuring progress and impacts should be considered. We suggest this is based around gross margins using common approach to assumptions and the calculation of Net Farm Income prior to commencement and annually. The Net Farm Income will allow improvements to be measured whilst correcting for general trends in the industry.
- The current programme has a strong emphasis on physical and husbandry improvements. Greater emphasis on how this integrates with the overall management of the farm and its financial performance relative to the wider industry and group members should be considered. A structured framework for benchmarking and monitoring among members would achieve this. Additional resources would be required although this could be in the form of farm secretarial support.
- Facilitators should be selected not just for their industry knowledge but also for their ability to effect change through their understanding of and practice communication and group learning skills.
- More formalised arrangements for networking and training of Facilitators would enable a sharing of knowledge about what works and what does not and would provide a forum for agreeing approaches to objective setting and monitoring.
- The Monitor Farm projects take place within a wide landscape of knowledge transfer and information activity. There is some evidence that this creates choice difficulties and time conflicts for potential group members. Further consideration should be given to how this programme integrates with other publicly or industry funded initiatives to seek synergies, and avoid overlap.
- The programme is already proving good at extending the message to a very wide audience. This could be enhanced with a more co-ordinated approach across all of the farms. Direct mail and the use of the press are favoured, specific technical notes and a structured approach to reporting on changes and performance via the press could extend the impact even further. Other possibilities include exclusive press initiatives.
- Currently the presence on the internet is embedded within funders existing websites. Greater visibility could be achieved though a central identify, through either its own site or a portal linking to other sites.
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