Involvement and decision making on-farm: the use of wintering feedpads and nitrogen inhibitors on dairy farms in New Zealand

Dairy farming has the potential to pollute waterways through the loss of nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Faecal Indicator Organisms (FIO). Two on-farm management actions that can reduce losses of N, P and FIOs are the use of wintering feedpads, and the application of nitrification inhibitors. In this paper we outline the results of research undertaken to explore the adoption of these amongst dairy farmers in New Zealand. Thirty-five semistructured qualitative interviews were undertaken in 2008/09. The results indicate that the decision to adopt a wintering feedpad is a high involvement decision driven by farm context. However the decision to adopt nitrification inhibitors is less involving and so is dependent on personal triggers. Three key learnings from this work are; involvement influences the type of decision making used by farmers; context influences high involvement decision making; different strategies are needed to promote adoption under low involvement compared to high involvement.