Overcoming barriers to the adoption of climate-friendly practices in agriculture

Climate change poses a dual challenge for agriculture, as the sector produces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is also vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate. Considerable research efforts have been devoted to understanding and developing effective technologies and practices that can reduce the sector’s GHG emissions, leading to an expanding range of viable options. Similarly, agriculture in many countries has developed a significant capacity to use a range of measures to adapt to the impacts of climate change. However, the adoption of these mitigation and adaptation measures, practices and technologies (hereafter defined as ‘climate-friendly’) lags behind the research, even though farmers must be taking action now so as to limit the impacts of climate change. Identifying the reasons behind the limited adoption of climate-friendly practices is essential to understand and address this gap. This activity is an important precursor to designing or restructuring policies to stimulate climate-friendly behaviour. This report analyses the potential barriers to the adoption of climate-friendly practices, ranging from barriers at the farm level through to the national level. This analysis is based on a comprehensive review of the literature. It explores how measures to reduce emissions (mitigation) and those supporting adaptation to the impacts of climate change have different drivers, and how they can face different barriers to adoption. The review of barriers focuses on measures for which the costs of adoption would not be prohibitive, although some may have a positive net cost to farmers but a societal net benefit