Our goal is to support and empower farmers to monitor, benchmark, and improve their environmental and productivity outcomes. We do this by integrating HESTIA’s data and models into toolkits co-designed by farmers. We aim for accessible and scalable solutions to transform farming in a way that works with and for farmers.
Currently, there is a major lack of evidence around how providing farmers with this information can help them to make changes. Additionally, there has been little research on the best ways to deliver environmental outcome information in an accessible and useful way.
We are providing farmers with HESTIA’s methods, models, and data in an accessible format to allow them to calculate, monitor changes in, and improve their environmental outcomes. We are running randomised control trials testing whether this changes their perceptions, behaviour, practices, and real farm outcomes.
Our approach is to enable farmers to improve farm sustainability outcomes by giving them information on their environmental impacts and yields (as well as how they compare to their peers) and realistic options for improvement.
We aim to empower farmers by giving them a mechanism for farmer-to-farmer knowledge transfer about their productivity and sustainability. Our approach is to enable farmers to understand their environmental outcomes, how they compare to their peers, and actions they could take to improve their sustainability and productivity.
Our environmental assessments require certain data. We will integrate HESTIA with tools farmers already use and existing datasets to minimise the time-burden on farmers to provide this data.
Farmers will be given information on their environmental outcomes, as well as how these outcomes compare to those of other farmers in similar circumstances.
Farmers will be given access to an automated advice engine, which will suggest actions most likely to be effective on their farm – based on comparing their performance with other comparable farms taking part in the trials.
Each trial involves an advisory group of farmers who co-design the toolkit with us to ensure our work is useful, accessible and trusted – both in terms of the type of information shared and the format in which it is shared.
We will run randomised control trials, in which farmers are assigned to control and treatment groups, so that any changes in farmer attitudes, behaviour and farm outcomes can be attributed to the treatment: our farm sustainability toolkit.