The role of economics in motivating farmers to improve udder health

Abstract

Economics is about allocating scarce resources between competing activities to achieve often conflicting objectives within constraints. It applies from farm to global level. As udder health affects the economics of Society as well as the farm business, it will be used to guide policy interventions and market incentives that motivate farmers to improve udder health as well as providing farmers themselves with associated decision support in their own economic interest. Changing agricultural policies that increase the exposure of farmers to global market forces and yet require them to address Society’s objectives for higher standards of animal welfare, food quality, safety, security at minimum damage to the environment during a period of increased uncertainty enhances the role of economics. This paper addresses these issues and highlights some of the challenges for economics in motivating farmers to improve udder health in this context. These challenges include providing farm specific decision support in real time, dealing with information shortage and overload, allowing for trade-offs between long and short run goals, managing risk and the need to establish improved udder health within a whole farm context. Tools to address these challenges are briefly described by example. These range from basic cost-benefit analysis of competing udder health activities and diagrammatic representations of trade-offs through to interdisciplinary studies combining biological and economic models with operational research techniques and economic theory to establish the impacts of improved udder health on international trade and on the environment.