Farm Certification Scheme Baseline Survey, 2020

Participating in farm certification schemes can be frustrating for farmers but does lead to improvements on-farm, according to a recent survey by the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge.

Farmers found plenty to both like and dislike about the farm certification schemes, with the benefits tending to equal or outweigh the inconvenience.

The three main benefits identified by survey respondents were for schemes that enabled access to premium markets, were easy to use, and increased farmer knowledge and improved farming practice.

The three most disliked aspects of their schemes were compliance costs (time, effort, money), duplication of information and data entry, and “tedious, useless and irrelevant questions”, says the survey report.

Overall, respondents were neutral to moderately satisfied with the main scheme in which they participated.