Source: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON submitted to
COMPLEXITY AND TRADEOFFS IN ANIMAL AGRICULTURE SUSTAINABILITY: BUILDING AWARENESS AND TRUST BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
EXTENDED
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1028350
Grant No.
2022-68006-37269
Project No.
WN.W-2021-10925
Proposal No.
2021-10925
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
A1261
Project Start Date
Jul 1, 2022
Project End Date
Jun 30, 2025
Grant Year
2022
Project Director
Collier, S.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
4333 BROOKLYN AVE NE
SEATTLE,WA 98195
Performing Department
Envir and Occup Health Science
Non Technical Summary
This project seeks to enhance understanding and build trust between producers and consumers in order to facilitate convergence of decision-making related to animal welfare and environmental impacts of meat production. Consumers increasingly demand radical changes to animal agriculture production systems in order to improve sustainability across multiple domains. Messaging to consumers is often over-simplified, single-issue-focused, and contradictory, leading to confusion for consumers trying to make the most impactful choices. This in turn results in market signals that are similarly unclear or contradictory, are frequently unhelpful for producers trying to make meaningful environmental and welfare-related improvements, and may in some instances actually hinder progress towards optimal solutions. Overall, this situation has the effect of eroding trust between consumers and producers and impeding transformational change. Work conducted as part of this project will address this disconnect through fully transdisciplinary, tightly coordinated research, education, and extension. We propose to (1) illuminate the complexity of animal agriculture decision-making related to animal welfare and environmental impact (2) assess how producers' perceptions of complexity in this space are aligned or misaligned with consumer perceptions and issue framings in existing consumer research, (3) apply an innovative educational model to facilitate convergence of understanding between producers and consumers related to complexity in this space, and (4) translate findings into actionable recommendations for the animal agriculture value chain regarding practices, communication, and policy.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
30739993030100%
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this project is to enhance the ongoing transformation of U.S. animal agriculture systems to make them more sustainable. Our team of interdisciplinary scientists, educators, and extension specialists has developed a comprehensive approach to achieve this goal via objectives that (1) identify how producers and downstream value chain actors make and balance sustainability decisions, especially in response to consumer preferences and market trends and pressures related to these decisions, (2) assess how existing research on consumer animal protein preferences frames the breadth and complexity of sustainability issues related to animal welfare and environmental impact and the extent to which this is aligned or misaligned with the breadth and complexity of producers' perceptions, (3) apply an innovative educational approach to explore how the priorities and opinions of consumers about products and practices aimed at improving animal welfare and environmental impacts would change if they were informed about and weighed competing arguments, and (4) translate this knowledge into action by working closely with stakeholder communities to inform and guide messaging, outreach, and strategies through extension programs and to key partners and policymakers. Our project features the use of a dynamic set of qualitative and quantitative social science research methods with representatives of local, state, and national beef, pork, and chicken (broiler) value chains to illuminate complexity in issues, decisions, and strategies at the intersection of animal welfare and environmental impact. Study investigators will assess the breadth, framing, and complexity of how existing and commonly used consumer market trend surveys have framed sustainability issues related to meat production with consumers to capture their preferences and priorities. Together, these activities will inform the novel application of a public consultation methodology to this topic in order to design a robust education effort that can evaluate whether, how, and on which issues consumers would change their behaviors if given the requisite knowledge to assess animal agriculture complexity. Finally, this project recognizes the essential role of Extension in driving animal agriculture transformation and will use key insights from all prior activities to develop effective messages and communication practices for consumers, build trust between producers and consumers, and inform policymakers. The extension efforts will incorporate stakeholder needs and local expertise of Extension agents into activities and materials. Extension outputs will be designed to incorporate systems thinking to address complexity and inspire informed action.
Project Methods
Conduct research with meat producers and value chain actors to assess complexity in sustainability decision-making, especially in response to consumer preferences & market trends.Conduct scoping review of the literature to assess how previous research on consumer preferences has framed the breadth and complexity of sustainability issues related to meat production.Create, jointly offer, and evaluate a new course to test innovative public consultation methodology assessing how consumers change decisions in light of new information and opportunities to weight competing arguments.Leverage Extension to share research and educational insights about complexity and decision making that can inform effective communication practices with consumers.(full methods are described in the project proposal, exceeds character limit)

Progress 07/01/22 to 06/30/23

Outputs
Target Audience: Beef, pork, and broiler producers, processors, and retailers Students Extension specialists Other researchers working with consumer perceptions of sustainability etc. Changes/Problems:Staffing and recruitment: We had a co-investigator move on from one of our project partner institutions (WSU) between the time of proposal preparation and the time of award. This required us to identify an alternate co-investigator at the institution, which created a lag in project activity from WSU and required some adjustments to the project workflow. We encountered difficulty in recruiting a postdoc at the project outset, both regarding the depth of the applicant pool and the post-pandemic willingness of candidates to relocate. Ultimately, we arrived at a solution where we were able to hire a postdoc half-time at project partner UMN (instead of full-time at UW as intended), and reallocate the remainder of the budget line to support graduate student research (and undergraduate research assistance) at UW. This turned out to be a largely beneficial solution, but has caused some delays in the project timeline due both to the initial delay in hiring and recruiting and the smaller portions of project-dedicated time distributed across more individuals with a various learning curves. Project timeline: Work is slightly behind schedule due to the initial staffing challenges and because the literature search for the scoping review returned significantly more hits than anticipated. The project is well-staffed now and work is proceeding smoothly. The delay in completion of research objectives will necessitate pushing back some of the project's outreach objectives so that they can fully leverage the research results. We will request a one-year NCE to ensure there is ample time for conclusion of research objectives and full dissemination of results. We do not foresee any significant obstacles to doing this, and are managing the project budget in accordance with the intention for an NCE. The most notable anticipated timing changes are: Producer and consumer outreach will begin in project year 2 but is anticipated to continue into a third project year. The majority of conference / professional meeting presentations will be delivered in 2024 rather than 2023. The policymakers workshop will be delivered in the third rather than second project year. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training Activities: Two undergraduate students received training in research methods: one related to qualitative data curation and one related to the systematic review process. Three masters students received training in research methods: one related to developing and conducting interviews and performing quantitative analysis, one related to performing qualitative analysis, and one in the systematic review process. All three also received training in general research best practices and data curation. One PhD student received training in research methods related to quantitative data analysis. One postdoctoral scholar received training in developing and conducting interviews and performing qualitative data analysis, as well as general research best practices and data curation. Professional Development: One graduate student, one postdoctoral scholar, one professional staff member and three project investigators attended, networked, and gained project-relevant knowledge and connections at professional conferences (the Sustainable Agriculture Summit and the Tilth Conference). One graduate student presented at a conference (the Cascadia Environmental, Occupational, and Population Health Conference). The graduate scholars cohort participated in regular study / professional development group activities. All project research trainees (two undergraduate students, four graduate students, one postdoc) gained practice in evaluating the scholarly work of others and presenting their own work via regular group meetings that included professional development activities. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The graduate scholars cohort - as students in interdisciplinary fields examining agricultural sustainability - are part of this project's target audience. Project framing, workplan, research updates, and background information were shared with them as part of their learning and professional development process. The Q sort research plan - an innovative approach to conducting research in the space of competing priorities - was presented to other researchers and students at the Cascadia Conference mentioned above. The majority of project outreach will take place in subsequent reporting periods, as research activities near completion. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period we will: Complete Q sort analysis and publish results. Conduct qualitative system mapping of the producer decision-making space related to environmental impacts and animal welfare. Complete and publish the scoping review of consumer research on this topic. Begin comparison of producer and consumer perceptions based on project research. Deliver the undergraduate course in animal agriculture sustainability, including collection data on student perceptions and evolution of thought, and preliminary analysis of the data. Conduct outreach to the value chain via meeting presentations, development and dissemination of outreach materials, and hosting producer-to-producer educational Farm Walks. Begin consumer-facing outreach via Farm Walk podcast creation. Request a one-year no-cost extension, which we anticipate will be necessary to fully complete and achieve all project objectives and goals.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Accomplishments during the first project year have been under objectives 1-3 listed above. Objective 1: Identify how producers and downstream value chain actors make and balance sustainability decisions, especially in response to consumer preferences and market trends and pressures related to these decisions. We convened an eight-member advisory committee composed of leaders from across project-relevant industries and organizations, representing both producer- and consumer-facing perspectives. The project team has met with the advisory committee at regular intervals to share progress and solicit feedback. The advisory committee has also advised on recruitment of participants for project research activities. This accomplishment ensures that project work is and remains well-informed by project stakeholder groups and well-tailored to the intended audiences. We conducted 12 'key informant interviews' with experts from beef, pork, and poultry industries. These were semi-structured interviews that focused on participants' perspectives on environmental impacts, animal welfare, producer/consumer mis/alignments, and tradeoffs. These interviews were of great value in informing and calibrating our lexicon for other subsequent research. We designed and conducted 41 'Q sort' interviews with beef, pork, and poultry producers representing different scales and geographies. The Q sort approach allowed us to examine "how do you prioritize when everything is a priority," focusing on a variety of environmental impact- and animal welfare-related priority statements. Data is currently being analyzed, and will ulitmately lead to an improved understanding of the different ways in which groups of producers value and prioritize different aspects of sustainability. Objective 2: Assess how existing research on consumer animal protein preferences frames the breadth and complexity of sustainability issues related to animal welfare and environmental impact and the extent to which this is aligned or misaligned with the breadth and complexity of producers' perceptions. We conducted a scoping review literature search for research articles examining consumer perceptions of meat sustainability. Our intial search yielded nearly 8,000 unique records, approximately 1,000 of which were retained after an initial screening of titles and abstracts for relevance to the study. We are in the process of screening the full text of those remaining articles to confirm their relevance. This will form the basis for a scoping review examining the state of consumer research on this topic, ultimately allowing comparisons to be made between consumer and producer perspectives. Objective 3: Apply an innovative educational approach to explore how the priorities and opinions of consumers about products and practices aimed at improving animal welfare and environmental impacts would change if they were informed about and weighed competing arguments. We provided mentorship and a focal topic for a seven-month interdisciplinary graduate scholars cohort program, in which students develop leadership skills while delving into complex topics of pressing concern to environmental sustainability. The cohort of 11 explored the topic of this project: complexity and tradeoffs in animal agriculture sustainability, and developed an iterative conceptual model of inputs, outputs, and feedback from an interdisciplinary perspective. The cohort considered decision-making, existing research, educational approaches, and consumer perspectives. This project activity contributed to the professional development of an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students. The process and outputs will also inform future educational objectives of the project. We developed, submitted, and received approval of a proposal for an undergraduate course in animal agriculture sustainability. This course is now under development and will be offered in 2024. It will provide both education in the project topic as well as an important data source addressing the aims of Objective 3.

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