Farm Certification Scheme Survey, 2022

This survey followed up a baseline survey to measure KPIs for the OLW Challenge – specifically, measuring participation in farm certification schemes. The data tables in the Results section provide a side-by-side comparison of the baseline (2020) and current survey (2021-22) results, thereby measuring progress from the baseline during the life of the programme.

There are numerous farm certification schemes available for farmers to participate in. For the current survey, over half of respondents participated in at least one farm certification scheme during the 12 months prior to their completion of this survey, with 27 per cent participating in two, and 13 per cent participating in at least three schemes. Farmers and growers continue to be involved with schemes that include financial, environmental, social and cultural indicators, with environmental indicators being the most common, and financial indicators being the least common in these schemes.

In comparing the current survey results with those of the baseline survey, there has been very little change between the two, suggesting little change in farmer participation in farm certification schemes over this period. However, there was a small increase in overall participation in farm certification schemes (+7%). There has been little change in the number of schemes that include all four types of indicators (financial, environmental, social, and cultural), or the overall number of indicators of each type included in these schemes.

As seen with the previous survey, respondents both liked and disliked numerous aspects of the farm certification schemes they participated in. For the current survey, the three most liked aspects were 1) ease of use of schemes; 2) quality assurance enabling premium market access (‘telling our story’); and 3) increased farmer knowledge and improved farming practice. As with the baseline survey, the three most disliked aspects of their schemes were 1) compliance costs (time, effort, money), 2) duplication of information and data entry, and 3) tedious, useless and irrelevant questions. There was very little change in these results between the two surveys.