5.From Fields to Landscapes

Challenges of scaling out innovative solutions

Lotta Fabricius Kristiansen & Magnus Ljung (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)

Bridging the implementation gap

New approaches to pollinator management and monitoring are necessary, along with empowering land managers to adopt such practices. The BEESPOKE project aims to address these challenges by promoting a bottom-up, land manager approach for scaling out developed solutions. Implementing these measures on a broad scale will instigate change at various levels, from fields to landscapes.

In agriculture and horticulture, traditional methods like field trials and experimental farms have facilitated the adoption of new technologies. However, the uptake of valuable measures, especially those related to ecosystem services like pollination, often suffers from a significant implementation gap. Collaborative efforts among landowners and growers are crucial in these cases, requiring engagement beyond farm gates and managing diverse perspectives through effective communication and learning methodologies.

Work package six of BEESPOKE focuses on formative evaluation and monitoring to facilitate communication and scaling out. Recognizing that no single solution is universally applicable, the development of a toolbox for advisors and others involved in the process of change becomes invaluable. Within BEESPOKE, various communicative tools have been applied and refined to bridge the implementation gap, enabling actors to operate at both field and landscape levels. Some of these tools will be discussed further.

1. Demonstration farms

On-farm demonstrations have a long tradition in Europe, originally driven by the need for efficient agriculture to sustain a growing population. These demonstrations aimed to transfer knowledge and inspire other farmers to change their practices. Over time, various strategies for on-farm demonstrations and research have emerged, including the monitor farm model, which emphasizes a participatory and practice-oriented approach.

Participatory group-based extension models offer several advantages, such as higher adoption rates, improved farm productivity, enhanced social well-being among farmers, and increased knowledge and skills through peer support. Such models could be viewed as a steppingstone between formal demonstration processes and farmers’ actions, by demonstrating innovations and facilitating monitoring and comparisons within a familiar context.

Within the BEESPOKE project, farm-level demonstrations have been established across the North Sea Region. These farms, with diverse production lines, serve as monitoring farms for methods and practices that promote tailored solutions for crop-specific pollinators and biodiversity enhancement. Additionally, these demo farms inspire and provide a learning environment for fellow farmers. Through demo farm events, experiences and knowledge are shared and discussed.

2. Educational material and field guides

Most farmers growing insect-pollinated crops do not measure pollinator visits to their crops, what types they are, or whether their crop yield is being limited by inadequate pollination, and few know how to do so. Usually, they are depending on advisors to help with the assessment. By adding a possibility for farmers to a simplified valuation on their own, the way towards action is shorter. BEESPOKE has developed simple protocols for the monitoring of pollinator populations in a variety of crops, including field guides and videos to networking, the focus would be on whether participants expanded their network. If the objective is the adoption of new measures, organizers should monitor participants’ inclination to adopt the demonstrated innovation. Understanding what the targeted group perceives and takes away, both in the short and long term, is key.

It is also valuable to keep different knowledge aspects apart. It enables us to specify the aim of an activity or measure. Ask yourself, what do we want the growers and farmers to improve?

• Know-why (motivation, raised awareness):

Participants are aware that there are specific problems or challenges and/or that new options are available and may be needed in the future.

• Know-what (the demo topic):

Participants are informed on specific novelties (new practices, materials, varieties, machinery, etc.)

• Know-how:

Participants can connect the new information to their own practices and are able to assess possibilities to implement it on their farm.

We also might want to know “what do participants do with what they brought home?” enable non-specialists to identify insect pollinators. The protocols show the growers how to measure whether their crop yield is limited by inadequate pollination. Making the training materials available and tested, training sessions for farmers and agronomists have been held on the demonstration farms. The materials produced are now available in different languages and can be used for educational purposes in schools, farmers’ events or citizen science projects in the future.

All BEESPOKE guides & tutorials can be found on page 48 or directly on our website and Youtube channel.

3. Monitoring and evaluation

Learning from experience is vital for improving communication and ensuring sustainable uptake. Monitoring and evaluating the effects of measures and events are essential to assess their success. Formative evaluation is used for continuous improvement, and it is crucial to align the evaluation with the objectives. For example, if the objective is

Evaluating new practices resulting from specific events or guidelines is complex. It takes time for participants to make actual changes in their farming practice since it might require financial investments, additional skills and knowledge, and a readjustment in the farmer’s usual routine or even a change of mindset. Decision-making for change is influenced by multiple information sources such as publications, demos, workshops, newsletters, advisory services, and interactions with other farmers. Thus, a comprehensive and long-term strategy is crucial for scaling out innovative solutions. It is important to take the abovementioned evaluations and reflections seriously to improve future events, on-farm demonstrations, and other activities.

4. Connecting social networks to the ecological network

Moving from field to landscape, not only changes how we must approach the ecological network and its potential, but it also changes the social system, whom to involve and finding new ways of interacting. This is in itself an innovative process, asking for specific competencies. Social and institutional innovations, like biodiversity conservation, are a shared responsibility and therefore easily becomes nobody’s responsibility. When fostering stakeholder collaboration, long-term considerations are essential. Designing the work with sufficient intensity, particularly during critical phases, and ensuring continuity over time due to the slow pace of land management change is crucial to maintain stakeholder engagement.

There is a strong link between farm business economics and socioecological sustainability. Conservation of certain ecological values often relies on active and traditional cultivation. A holistic development perspective for rural areas, including entrepreneurship and the local economy, is important. A strong and shared vision for rural areas, held by core actors, becomes instrumental because it is about creating supporting structures in many areas of development. Therefore responsible scaling out is not just about technical feasibility but relates also to different ideas on progress and development.

Specific strategies for scaling out will need to be tailor-made and context-specific. For this, we do not only need standards and guidelines, but individual and collective competencies as well as conducive spaces for appropriate strategy development and implementation. Only then we can move from field to landscape, from an individual grower to a learning community, as well as be able to approach the pollination challenges as holistically as possible.

5. Key recommendations for policy

It is important to create good enough external preconditions for the abovementioned measures to be scaled out. It is about creating conducive policy environments, both on regional and (inter)national levels.

Some recommendations are:

1. Support the development of new approaches to facilitate change, including adapting these to the unique characteristics of local networks and platforms for learning and co-innovation in new areas (creating space for experiments).

2. Establish systems for vertical integration of actors in the policy chain.

3. Motivate landowners to invest in pollination management by funding new measures for improved biodiversity, and make sure that such schemes are sustained over a longer period.

4. Demand systems for formative evaluation, for continuously improving preconditions and methods when scaling out social and institutional innovations, so that we consciously learn from our experiences.