BEING able to communicate shared values with the public is three to five times more effective in maintaining trust than demonstrating technical ability or facts and figures.
That was the key takeaway from a presentation given by Dairy Australia project officer Sarah Bolton at the Grower Group Alliance 2021 Forum held in Perth recently.
Ms Bolton presented on the topic of social license - what it is, what approaches have been taken and what lessons can be learnt from the Australian dairy industry on the matter.
In 2017, the National Farmers' Federation ran a poll in which 83 per cent of Australians described their connection to agriculture as either distant or non-existent.
While a 2018 report commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment found 95pc of Australians viewed farm animal welfare as a concern.
Combine the two and it means that in Australia we are dealing with a situation where the majority of the population feels disconnected from agriculture and doesn't understand it, but they're very much concerned about it.
Ms Bolton said there was significant monetary value attached to maintaining a social license to operate, but those statistics show how difficult it is.
"Social license comes down to the core of society acknowledging that they as a collective whole don't really understand a particular industry well enough in order to regulate it, so they trust that industry will do the right thing and regulate itself," Ms Bolton said.
"But if that particular industry fails to self-regulate in a way that the community approves of, then it is likely that the community will intervene, despite their lack of understanding, in order to make sure that what that industry is doing is something that people will approve of.
"There are a whole lot of different approaches people have suggested we can go about preserving the importance of public trust, given how much it means to an industry and the monetary that is attached to being able to preserve our way of doing things."
When it comes to those approaches, Ms Bolton grouped them into three main categories - the first being the restricting of the flow of information.
Given that the general public is already disconnected from what is happening on farms, it makes sense to keep them out altogether - that has been done in the United States to quite an extent under the banner of ag-gag laws and to a lesser degree in Australia with farm trespass laws.
"This approach is counter-productive and doesn't serve us well," Ms Bolton said.
"There is a significant body of social science evidence that shows when the average person on the street learns that a particular industry is planning to restrict the flow of information and reduce transparency, they automatically assume we have something to hide.
"It leads to a lower level of trust in the industry and it can lead to people assuming that things like animal welfare standards may be worse than what they actually are in reality."
The next approach, which is agriculture's favourite one to reach for, is educating the public - it makes sense that if they're disconnected and don't understand farming practices, then they need to be educated so they can understand and therefore accept what farmers do.
However that approach is not a silver bullet and there are shortfalls to it, starting with sheer numbers - if 83pc of people are disconnected, then how do the remaining 17pc educate them?
The next big shortfall of this approach is that the education approach can also lead to new concerns.
Ms Bolton used the example of a study done by the University of British Columbia in Canada where they invited members of the general public to an open day on the university's research dairy farm.
They surveyed members of the public on their concerns about dairy before and after they went on a guided tour of the farm.
She said before their educational experience, members of the public were concerned about things like whether the animals were well fed, had adequate shelter and good nutritional management.
"After the educational experience they felt a lot better about a lot of those initial concerns, however a lot of those participants also ended up with new concerns that they never had before learning about all the different aspects of dairy farming," Ms Bolton said.
"In this particular study, a major concern for them was that it was a housed dairy farm, which is very common in Canada, and they were also concerned that calves were separated from the cow at birth and they didn't know that was a standard practice.
"The take-home message there is that while we have to be transparent as an industry in order to preserve trust, we have to be prepared that it could lead to new concerns."
Another big issue with the educational approach is that it is one thing to educate the person into understanding, but it is another matter entirely to change their core values.
"For example, we might explain that we manage surplus dairy calves through early life slaughter pathways because it is the most economically viable option for the industry and we do it in accordance with a whole lot of legislative minimum standards," Ms Bolton said.
"While you might be able to explain that to someone and they might be able to understand it, being able to accept it comes down to whether or not it's altered their core values."
The third approach to preserving public trust was realigning industry practices with public values - it is the most difficult, the most time consuming and the most expensive, but it has also been shown to be the most effective.
Figures out of the US show that being able to communicate shared values with the public is three to five times more effective than demonstrating technical ability or facts and figures when it comes to maintaining trust.
"From a dairy point of view, that means as an industry we need to be able to say that we acknowledge early life slaughter is something that doesn't sit well with the general public," Ms Bolton said.
"We need to be able to say that as an industry we acknowledge it's an issue, we don't have a perfect solution right now, but this is what we're currently doing to be able to get to a space in the future that is more aligned with those concerns."
Delving deeper into the dairy example, Ms Bolton highlighted that around the world, many other countries had taken that approach.
The Irish Food Board banned healthy calf euthanasia from November 2019, Denmark plans to bring the same rules into effect from 2022 and the UK from 2023.
Ms Bolton said when it came to social licenses, a huge focus has to be put on the idea that we live in a global society.
"Social media doesn't discriminate between a post that comes from the UK compared to one from Australia, plus we have a lot of multinational milk companies here as well," she said.
"While it is pretty unlikely that we will have any legislative changes to require around how we manage surplus dairy calves, what if we were to wake up to a market incentive or disincentive that stipulates how we had to manage them."
"What effect would that have on farm business profitability, animal welfare, the environment, labour availability and infrastructure - in order to tackle a problem like that we have to come up with alternatives that are both socially acceptable as well as economically viable."
According to Ms Bolton, agricultural industries in Australia, not just dairy, need to be setting themselves up to address those multiple challenges at the same time.
She said industries need to be working towards possible alternatives that are sustainable for every player in the supply chain, but those alternatives need to be able to withstand fluctuations in seasonal conditions, as well as commodity prices.
"Social evolution is constant and society's values will be continually evolving, so industries need to be set up to be able to evolve constantly in line with those public values," she said.
"What really underpins the question of whether we're socially sustainable is this idea of public values - is a particular practice in line with them and will continue to be in line with those values as they evolve.
"As we look to implement new technologies, solve our problems and set us up for the future, we have to remember to have one eye on what is technically desirable, but make sure we're doing that in line with what is going to be socially acceptable."