Abstract/Summary

This study explores how livestock farmers in the UK are managing their workloads and the need to comply with sustainability standards, at a time when farm workforces are constrained by financial pressures and labour shortages. Whereas the labour implications of agri-environment schemes have been expertly studied, there has been less research on private-sector farm assurance schemes. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines analysis of scheme documents, data from the English Farm Business Survey, a postal survey of 230 farms and telephone interviews with 34 farmers, focusing on businesses with cattle or sheep in the English counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Wiltshire. The study identifies an increase in operational demands that farms must comply with to qualify for grant payments, remain certified and access markets. Livestock farms also face demands for increasingly sophisticated measures of record-keeping, planning and monitoring which require IT literacy and an experimental approach. To date the greatest burden has fallen on dairy farms, but the requirements for beef and lamb producers are growing. The study uses theories of farm resilience to conceptualise how farms accommodate the demands of farm assurance and other labour pressures. It finds that most livestock farms have the capacity to stretch their labour force, which helps them to cope with fluctuating workloads. Livestock farms are also adept at postponing non-urgent tasks and adjusting their production systems to bring their workloads in balance with their available labour. However, the study identified farms whose labour systems were under strain. Going forward, livestock farms must confront a widening range of external requirements in order to fulfil agri-environment demands of the state, meet the sustainability commitments of mainstream buyers or pursue alternative marketing channels. The study finds that if they are to fully implement these requirements and avoid becoming over-stretched, many livestock farms will need to find ways to afford and access additional help. Already, the financial and labour costs of compliance were prompting some sheep farmers in the study to consider dropping out of the Red Tractor scheme. The study contributes to research on farm-level resilience and change by paying close attention to how such labour issues affect farm decisions.