Encouraging sustainable farming

Background

Southeast Asia is one of the largest rice-producing and exporting regions of the world. Traditional rice production methods, which rely on flooding fields, account for a large proportion of this rice production. Unfortunately, these methods are responsible for 12% of methane emissions globally.

We are working with sustainable agriculture experts and different agricultural organisations across Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand to increase uptake of region-specific sustainable farming practices (e.g., reducing chemical fertiliser application, stopping crop residue burning, and reducing water usage).

Our aim is to empower the local agricultural organisations to understand and integrate a behavioural science approach to the important work they are already undertaking.

What We’re Doing

Following a bespoke CARING TREE workshop, we collaborate with the local organisations to understand the behaviour in the local context. Using insights from CARING TREE, primary and secondary research, and the local team, we co-develop a bespoke and multifaceted intervention approach.

Some examples from our co-designed interventions include: media and social media campaigns aimed at increasing interest in sustainable farming methods; behavioural science informed farmer trainings; reward systems for farmers adopting sustainable rice farming methods; farming tools to make sustainable farming behaviours as easy as possible and school-based interventions to adjust community misperceptions of agricultural burning.

Outcome

To ensure real world impact, the interventions are being rolled out and evaluated across using a randomised control trial (RCT) to gauge the uptake of these sustainable agriculture behaviours and measure any change in farmers’ openness and attitudes towards sustainable farming.

Following the evaluation of the interventions, changes will be made in accordance with our findings. The respective interventions will then be scaled up, and rolled out more widely across Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.