WP5: Socio-economic implications of changes in the management

WP5: Socio-economic implications of changes in the management

Involved partners: WU, UREAD

Animal health problems reflect only one source of risks farmers need to manage. Considering the limited availability of resources on a farm, farmers allocate resources to the risk sources which are considered to be of the highest importance. Farmers need decision support to indicate those measures that will give them the highest economic net return within the farm’s constraints.

To identify potential incentives and socio-economic barriers towards improvements with respect to animal health, the following objectives are addressed:

• to examine the financial importance of different health problems from farmers’ perspective,to examine the motivation
• to improve disease management and to implement recommended measures, and the effect of the participatory approach thereon,
• to assess the cost-effectiveness of recommended measures within farm specific constraints,
• to examine farmers’, advisors’ and veterinarians’ reactions and attitudes towards the participatory approach and the developed protocols to improve prevention and treatments,
• to assess farmers’ and veterinarians’ attitudes, knowledge, motivation, and possible objections towards improved monitoring and prevention,
• to capture farmers’ and veterinarians’ attitude, motivation, and knowledge about alternative treatments and expertise to correspond to the state-of-the-art,
• to account costs with respect to establishing appropriate preconditions for making use of alternative treatments (WP4)

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