The aim of this project is to assess different methods of parasite management communication with farmers and vets for their usefulness, reach, impact, and associated behaviour change.
Background
Drench resistance is an increasing issue in New Zealand. Farmers need to have access to the most up to date information so informed decisions can be made for parasite management with the aim of preventing or reversing drench resistance on their farms. To do this, the information needs to be communicated effectively and have the desired impact. This project was run in 2021 and we received useful information about the education resources and their impacts. We are repeating this survey to follow up with participants of the 2021 study, to increase the pool of participants by trialling different ways to engage and to see if the trends observed in 2021 are repeatable in 2022.
A variety of communication channels are used to provide information to farmers:
- A podcast with farmers at various stages of their drench resistance journey.
- An animated video on understanding parasites and anthelmintic resistance.
- Wormwise drench poster (PDF, 1.9MB).
- Wormwise workshops.
- Wormwise e-learning module.
Each of these channels of communication will be evaluated for reach and impact on farmer knowledge, attitude, skills, aspirations and behaviour change. They will be benchmarked against other B+LNZ communication messages. Additionally, the success of each communication method will be compared to each other.
This year we are also asking farmers what their biggest challenge is when it comes to managing parasites on their farm and what B+LNZ can be doing to support farmers managing livestock parasites. This information will be used to inform the research in the parasite management space.
The project will use:
- analytics to assess the reach of the material
- models to predict the impact of this parasite campaign
- online surveys taken by participants immediately after viewing the material
- online surveys taken by participants approximately 2-3 months later to assess if learnings from these communication methods was adopted .
Benefit to farmers/industry
The benefits for farmers of this project are:
- Parasite management communicated in new and different ways with the aim of reaching a large audience.
- Communication methods evaluated so future messages can get to farmers in the most useful way to support practice change on farm and invest wisely in communication.
Timeline and investment
This is a 6-month project due for completion in October 2022.
B+LNZ investment is $40,000 over the duration of the project.
Partners: This project is led by Scarlatti and funded by B+LNZ.
B+LNZ point of contact: Cara Brosnahan.