Can increasing farmers' awareness improve soil and water phosphorus status? Insights from a 'real-life' policy process

Addressing diffuse agricultural water pollution is central to ensuring food security while halting ecosystem degradation. Awareness-focused approaches attempting to prompt adoption of best farming practices to reduce negative impact on water quality are being increasingly implemented. This interdisciplinary study explores this awareness―behavioural change―water quality pathway in full and over time. We do so in the context of a ‘real-life’ active policy process, combining farmers’ survey data one and four years after the inception of a government nutrient management programme in Northern Ireland, with soil and river water phosphorus analyses at the sub-catchment level. Our results suggest that increased awareness and changes in farm practices can be sustained over time, but whether they translate to reductions in soil and water phosphorus (thus completing the pathway in full), critically depends on the provision of tailored one-to-one advice. The recommendation that stems from this is that future agri-environment policies should include tailored and context specific advice in addition to the generic one. Our research also provides insights into the operationality of post-normal interdisciplinary science applied to wicked problems, illustrating the need to adjust methods and approaches in ways that produce robust science within the possibility of the policy context, even if this means accepting ‘imperfect’ experimental designs. Acknowledging that the particular changes observed in our case might be specific to Northern Ireland, two lessons are of broader relevance: 1) discussions on agricultural system transformation should include considerations on how to deliver tailored advice at scale; and 2) further disentanglement of the full impact pathway from increasing farmers awareness to mitigating enviromental impacts from agriculture requires the integration of social sciences from the outset of policy programmes' design, rather than being incorporated only as retrospective research.