Part time farmers engagement with advisory services and how it can be improved

Part-time farmers are a diverse cohort that is said to have low levels of engagement with their advisory services. Part-time farmers are most likely suckler or beef farmers. Suckler and beef enterprises have lower profitability than other enterprises, such as dairying. As a result, farmers opt to work off-farm to supplement the household income. Due to these off-farm work commitments, part-time farmers find it difficult to allocate time to engage with their advisory services due to their lack of spare time. A knowledge gap surrounds these farmers and their engagement with their advisory services, as there has been a lack of in-depth studies. This study begins to address this knowledge gap by examining what communication and KT methods work best for part-time farmers to achieve their targets and goals. The barriers to this engagement are also identified in this study to work towards overcoming them and thus increase the engagement of these farmers. Advisory services can improve the engagement level of these farmers by adjusting the methods used and increasing their flexibility in delivering advice (Kinsella, 2018). In addition, there is currently no set definition of a part-time farmer; therefore, a secondary part of this study was to define a part-time farmer. This study employed a mixed-methods approach using an online farmer survey as the foundation to feed into the farmer and advisor interviews that followed. The results from the farmer survey indicate that part-time farmers work an average of 35 hours off the farm per week as they want to have a more reliable and stable source of income. Scheme work forms the primary reason for their engagement, followed by technical advice to a lesser extent. As time was identified as the main barrier to farmer engagement concluded from all of the study methods, allowing a more flexible and relevant approach to advising part-time farmers should, therefore, increase their engagement with their advisory services.