New Zealand policymakers need to stop speaking in confusing academic language if they want to find common ground with farmers, Nuffield Scholar Kerry Worsnop says.
Worsnop says major changes are needed to the way we create agricultural policy in this country, including breaking down the barriers between policymakers and farmers.
“The public service has existed in its own world for a quite a long time and it’s developed a language that is heavily academic.
“That’s just become normal in New Zealand – but it’s actually not normal.
“There’s no way you can have common ground if you don’t share a common language.”
Worsnop, whose Nuffield report explores why agricultural policy design is broken and how we can fix it, says baffling policy-speak is a sure-fire way to get farmers feeling resistant to change.
“If you have a policymaker who doesn’t understand farming language, and a farmer who’s tasked with complying with something and they have no idea what half of the policy-speak means, you’ve got a recipe for pretty terrible engagement.”
As part of her Nuffield Scholarship, Worsnop travelled to see how agricultural policy is made in other countries.
“I sat in a room in the UK and listened to people who are trying to do the biggest reforms in agriculture in 70 years.
“I heard one of their senior executives say, ‘Look, if there is even one page in any of this that a farmer can’t read and understand, then we are screwing it up and throwing it out’.
“I sat there in kind of semi-shock because there are entire policy workstreams where farmers would struggle to read a paragraph of it in New Zealand, and that’s just our normal.”
An example of where she’s seen this is in conversations about water quality.
“Academics describe water clarity in terms of ‘turbidity’ – farmers describe it as dirty, silted or muddy,” she says.
“Policy people talk about things like dissolved oxygen levels, macroinvertebrates, and eutrophication, which aren’t terms you’d ever find in farming.
“However, farmers deeply understand concepts like what animals need to survive and thrive, and they’re really good at achieving those outcomes.
“When it’s clear that what the policy wants to achieve is to make the living things in the water as abundant and healthy as possible, then there’s a much higher chance the definition of success can be shared.”
She says, most of the time in New Zealand, policy people “in ivory towers” write in academic language, which then needs to be interpreted for farmers by a consultant or official, to explain how the policy works on the ground.
Another problem is what Worsnop describes as “a linear chain of command”.
She says the way policy is made needs to be much more collaborative, rather than a top-down approach.
“The way we do things here is that the policymakers determine what the problem is and come up with proposals.
“They’ll consult briefly on it and then make you do whatever it’s decided you should do in that linear process.”
That process tends to be highly patronising because it hasn’t started with the people who are actually going to be affected by the changes, like farmers, Worsnop says.
There needs to be more time and resources committed to a collaborative process right at the at the front of the policy-making process, she says.
“Because that often hasn’t been invested in, what you find is policy people say, ‘We know what’s best for you, and stop questioning us because you just don’t want to have to do change’.
“‘It doesn’t matter that you think this won’t work. Just suck it up and get on with it.’”
Worsnop says it’s only natural that farmers – like anyone else – will switch off if an official is standing there telling them what they think is best.
“If you want to see what people do in that situation, go to a room full of people who are being told what they should do, who haven’t been asked what they think the definition of success is.
“They will have their arms crossed and they’ll have their heads down. A handful of them might have their hands on the hips because they’re ready to fight back.
“The way you want to address complex policy is with open people with open minds.
“There needs to be goodwill, attempting to tackle problems where there’s an agreed definition of the problem and some consensus on what success will look like.”
Hear Worsnop discuss how to fix agricultural policy in the latest Federated Farmers podcast episode – fedfarm.org.nz/podcast.
Federated Farmers, New Zealand’s leading independent rural advocacy organisation, has established a news and insights partnership with AgriHQ, the country’s leading rural publisher, to give the farmers of New Zealand a more informed, united and stronger voice. Federated Farmers news and commentary appears each week in its own section of the Farmers Weekly print edition and online.
Ideas That Grow Podcast | Rachel Baker: Insights from the Nuffield Global Focus Programme
Halfway through the 2024 Scholarship Programme, Scholar Rachel Baker gives us a unique perspective from inside Nuffield. Rachel speaks with Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly managing editor, about some of the similarities and differences between the farming systems in the countries visited so far with New Zealand’s.
She discusses insights from Indonesia’s farming industries, France’s love of food, Denmark entering an emissions scheme, California’s water challenges and Chile’s low rates of Research and Development.
This is a must listen for anyone considering a Nuffield Scholarship.
