Smoothing the Phosphorus Resource Stress under the Socioeconomic Development in China.

Phosphorus (P) is the key in maintaining food security and ecosystem functions. Population growth and economic development have increased the demand for phosphate rocks. China has gradually developed from zero phosphate mining to the world's leading P miner, fertilizer, and agricultural producer since 1949. China released policies, such as designating phosphate rock as a strategic resource, promoting eco-agricultural policies, and encouraging the use of solid wastes produced in mining and the phosphorus chemical industry as construction materials. However, methodological and data gaps remain in the mapping of the long-term effects of policies on P resource efficiency. Here, P resource efficiency can be represented by the potential of the P cycle to concentrate or dilute P as assessed by substance flow analysis (SFA) complemented by statistical entropy analysis (SEA). P-flow quantification over the past 70 years in China revealed that both resource utilization and waste generation peaked around 2015, with 20 and 11 Mt of mined and wasted P, respectively. Additionally, rapidly increasing aquaculture wastewater has exacerbated pollution. The resource efficiency of the Chinese P cycle showed a U-shaped change with an overall improvement of 22.7%, except for a temporary trough in 1975. The driving force behind the efficiency decline was the roaring phosphate fertilizer industry, as confirmed by the sharp increase in P flows for both resource utilization and waste generation from the mid-1960s to 1975. The positive driving forces behind the 30.7% efficiency increase from 1975 to 2018 were the implementation of the resource conservation policy, downstream pollution control, and, especially, the circular agro-food system strategy. However, not all current management practices improve the P resource efficiency. Mixing P industry waste with construction materials and the development of aquaculture to complement offshore fisheries erode P resource efficiency by 2.12% and 9.19%, respectively. With the promotion of a zero-waste society in China, effective P-cycle management is expected.

Variation in Pathogenicity and Subsequent Production of Sclerotia of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum Isolates in Different Cover Crops, Flower Strips, and Weeds.

Cover crops and flower strips are used in agricultural fields as part of integrated pest management strategies. However, their potential as secondary hosts of soilborne pathogens such as Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in oilseed rape cultivation is not fully comprehended. In the current study, we evaluated the effect of pathogen virulence on the development of Sclerotinia stem/leaf rot and sclerotia production in 33 plant species from 11 botanical families using two S. sclerotiorum isolates. Furthermore, the effect of sclerotial size on carpogenic germination was studied. Results showed that the pathogen's virulence significantly affected the occurrence and development of Sclerotinia stem/leaf rot and the subsequent production of sclerotia. Among all plant species tested, 26 were more susceptible to the highly aggressive S. sclerotiorum isolate, which produced more and bigger sclerotia in 17 species than the less aggressive isolate. Moreover, a stronger positive correlation was found between the relative lesion length of plants inoculated with the highly aggressive isolate and the number of sclerotia produced by this isolate (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient [rs] = 0.572; P = 0.004). Additionally, we found that larger and heavier sclerotia produced stipes and apothecia earlier and at a greater rate than smaller ones. The heavyweight class had the highest carpogenic germination rate (82.4%), followed by the average (67.2%) and lightweight classes (59.5%). Our findings highlight the need for further investigation into the potential risks associated with cover crops, weeds, and flower strips as secondary hosts of soilborne pathogens in agricultural fields.

Non-monetary motivations of the EU agri-environmental policy adoption. A causal forest approach.

This paper investigates the non-monetary motivations of farmers' adoption of agri-environmental policies. Unlike the monetary (income) motivations, non-monetary drivers can not be directly observed but can be identified from observational data within appropriate quasi-experimental designs. A theoretical justification of farmers' choices is first formulated and a consequent natural experiment setting is derived. The latter admits heterogeneous, i.e. Individual, Treatment Effects (ITE) that, in turn, can be interpreted in terms of more targeted and tailored policy expenditure. A Causal Forest (CF) approach is adopted to estimate these ITEs for both the treated and not treated units. The approach is applied to two balanced panel samples of Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) farms observed over the 2008-2018 period and concerns agri-environmental policies delivered through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Results show how heterogeneous the farmers' response and the associated non-monetary motivations can be, thus indicating room for a more efficient policy design.

Behavioral factors driving farmers' intentions to adopt spot spraying for sustainable weed control.

Smart Farming Technologies enable plant-specific agrochemical applications which can increase the efficiency and reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. However, the uptake of Smart Farming Technologies remains slow despite their potential to enhance sustainable transformation of food systems. The design of policies to promote sustainable agricultural technologies requires a holistic understanding of the complex set of factors driving the adoption of innovations at farm level. This study has a focus on behavioral factors, such as pro-environmental attitude, personal innovativeness and moral norms. Based on an online study conducted in Germany, structural equation modelling is applied to test the predictions of an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behavior, using spot spraying, a smart weeding technology, as an example. The results confirm theoretical predictions and show that indicators of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control have relevant effects on farmers' adoption intentions. The extended model revealed a medium-sized (small) direct effect of moral norms on the attitude towards spot spraying (adoption intention). Personal innovativeness had a small effect on adoption intention, whereas pro-environmental attitude did not exhibit a clear direction of impact. Methodological and policy implications derived from the results are discussed noting that the inclusion of indicators for moral norms can improve the predictive power of models used in future research in this field. Overall, initiatives aimed at facilitating the exchange of opinions and related moral norms as well as collaboration among peers may contribute to voluntary sustainable innovation as it enhances adoption intentions among farmers.

Exploring Winegrowers' Behaviours and Ecological Impacts Under Climate Change and Policy Scenarios-Examples from Three European Winegrowing Regions.

Viticulture is an example of a socio-ecological system that poses serious challenges for sustainable soil management and pesticide use, with various interactions between winegrowers' decision-making and ecological consequences. This study introduces an agent-based model (ABM) on winegrowers' decision on inter-row management and pesticide use. The ABM builds upon an empirical study of winegrowers' decision-making in European viticultural landscapes and has been built for three case study regions: Leithaberg (Austria), Palatinate (Germany) and Târnave (Romania). The ABM allows for analysing potential effects of policy instruments including mandatory vegetation cover in the inter-rows, the reduction of fungicide use and ban of insecticides against Lobesia botrana. The effects of policies differ between the case study regions, indicating how important the local context is for effective policies. For example, policies aiming at higher inter-row vegetation cover had the strongest effects on vegetation cover, landscape aesthetics and soil loss in Târnave since many vineyards are currently intensively tilled and there exist no policies supporting inter-row vegetation cover in Romania.

Invertebrate biodiversity continues to decline in cropland.

Modern agriculture has drastically changed global landscapes and introduced pressures on wildlife populations. Policy and management of agricultural systems has changed over the last 30 years, a period characterized not only by intensive agricultural practices but also by an increasing push towards sustainability. It is crucial that we understand the long-term consequences of agriculture on beneficial invertebrates and assess if policy and management approaches recently introduced are supporting their recovery. In this study, we use large citizen science datasets to derive trends in invertebrate occupancy in Great Britain between 1990 and 2019. We compare these trends between regions of no- (0%), low- (greater than 0-50%) and high-cropland (greater than 50%) cover, which includes arable and horticultural crops. Although we detect general declines, invertebrate groups are declining most strongly in high-cropland cover regions. This suggests that even in the light of improved policy and management over the last 30 years, the way we are managing cropland is failing to conserve and restore invertebrate communities. New policy-based drivers and incentives are required to support the resilience and sustainability of agricultural ecosystems. Post-Brexit changes in UK agricultural policy and reforms under the Environment Act offer opportunities to improve agricultural landscapes for the benefit of biodiversity and society.

Support for an area-heterogeneity tradeoff for biodiversity in croplands.

Rapid expansion of the human population poses a challenge for wildlife conservation in agricultural landscapes. One proposal for addressing this challenge is to increase biodiversity in such landscapes by increasing crop diversity. However, studies report both positive and negative effects of crop diversity on biodiversity. One possible explanation, derived from the "area-heterogeneity tradeoff hypothesis," is that the effect of crop diversity on biodiversity depends on a tradeoff between increasing the number of crop types in a landscape and decreasing the amount of each single crop type. This should cause positive effects of increasing crop diversity at low to intermediate crop diversity and negative effects at intermediate to high crop diversity. We also propose two factors that could change the point at which the effect of increasing crop diversity shifts from positive to negative. First, we predicted that this shift would occur at a lower crop diversity when the surrounding landscape contains less semi-natural habitat and at a higher crop diversity when the landscape contains more semi-natural habitat. This should increase the likelihood of detecting negative effects of crop diversity when semi-natural cover is low and positive effects when it is high. Second, we predicted that the shift from a positive to negative effect would occur at a lower crop diversity when it is measured locally than when it is measured at greater distances from the site, making detection of negative crop diversity effects more likely when measurements are at local extents. We tested these predictions using data on the biodiversity of herbaceous plants, butterflies, syrphid flies, woody plants, bees, carabid beetles, spiders, and birds at 221 crop field edges in Eastern Ontario, Canada. We found support for an area-crop diversity tradeoff. Semi-natural cover and measurement extent influenced the biodiversity-crop diversity relationship, with positive effects when semi-natural cover was high and negative effects when semi-natural cover was low and when crop diversity was measured at local extents. The results suggest that policies/guidelines designed to increase crop diversity will not benefit biodiversity in the landscapes where conservation action is most urgently needed, that is, in landscapes with high agricultural use and low semi-natural cover.

Opportunities and challenges for Common Agricultural Policy reform to support the European Green Deal.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union's main instrument for agricultural planning, with a new reform approved for 2023-2027. The CAP intends to align with the European Green Deal (EGD), a set of policy initiatives underpinning sustainable development and climate neutrality in the European Union (EU), but several flaws cast doubts about the compatibility of the objectives of these 2 policies. We reviewed recent literature on the potential of CAP environmental objectives for integration with the EGD: protection of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable management of natural resources. The CAP lacks appropriate planning measures, furthering instead risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services driven by landscape and biotic homogenization. Funding allocation mechanisms are not tailored to mitigate agricultural emissions, decreasing the efficiency of climate mitigation actions. The legislation subsidies farmers making extensive use of synthetic inputs without adequately supporting organic production, hindering the transition toward sustainable practices. We recommend proper control mechanisms be introduced in CAP Strategic Plans from each member state to ensure the EU is set on a sustainable production and consumption path. These include proportional assignment of funds to each CAP objective, quantitative targets to set goals and evidence-based interventions, and relevant indicators to facilitate effective monitoring of environmental performance. Both the CAP and the EGD should maintain ambitious environmental commitments in the face of crisis to avoid further degradation of the natural resources on which production systems stand.

Oportunidades y retos para la reforma a la Política Agrícola Común que respalden el Pacto Verde Europeo Resumen La Política Agrícola Común (PAC) es el principal instrumento de planificación agraria de la Unión Europea, con una nueva reforma aprobada para 2023-2027. La PAC pretende alinearse con el Pacto Verde Europeo (PVE), un conjunto de iniciativas políticas que apuntan al desarrollo sostenible y la neutralidad climática en la UE, aunque varias fallas han arrojado dudas sobre la compatibilidad de los objetivos de estas dos políticas. Revisamos la bibliografía reciente sobre el potencial de integración de los objetivos medioambientales de la PAC con el PVE en tres categorías: protección de la biodiversidad; mitigación del cambio climático y adaptación al mismo y, gestión sostenible de los recursos naturales. Encontramos que la PAC carece de medidas de planificación adecuadas, lo que agrava los riesgos para la biodiversidad y los servicios ambientales derivados de la homogeneización biótica y paisajística. Los mecanismos de asignación de fondos no están adaptados para mitigar las emisiones agrícolas, lo que disminuye la eficiencia de las acciones de mitigación del cambio climático. La legislación subsidia a los agricultores que hacen un uso extensivo de insumos sintéticos sin apoyar adecuadamente la producción ecológica, obstaculizando la transición hacia prácticas sostenibles. Recomendamos que se introduzcan mecanismos de control adecuados en los Planes Estratégicos de la PAC de cada Estado miembro para garantizar que la UE se encamina hacia una producción y un consumo sostenibles. Estos mecanismos incluyen la asignación proporcional de fondos a cada objetivo de la PAC, objetivos cuantitativos para fijar metas e intervenciones basadas en pruebas, e indicadores pertinentes para facilitar un seguimiento eficaz de los resultados medioambientales. Tanto la PAC como el PVE deben mantener compromisos medioambientales ambiciosos frente a la crisis para evitar una mayor degradación de los recursos naturales sobre los que se asientan los sistemas de producción.

Evaluation of the Use of the 12 Bands vs. NDVI from Sentinel-2 Images for Crop Identification.

Today, machine learning applied to remote sensing data is used for crop detection. This makes it possible to not only monitor crops but also to detect pests, a lack of irrigation, or other problems. For systems that require high accuracy in crop identification, a large amount of data is required to generate reliable models. The more plots of and data on crop evolution used over time, the more reliable the models. Here, a study has been carried out to analyse neural network models trained with the Sentinel satellite's 12 bands, compared to models that only use the NDVI, in order to choose the most suitable model in terms of the amount of storage, calculation time, accuracy, and precision. This study achieved a training time gain of 59.35% for NDVI models compared with 12-band models; however, models based on 12-band values are 1.96% more accurate than those trained with the NDVI alone when it comes to making predictions. The findings of this study could be of great interest to administrations, businesses, land managers, and researchers who use satellite image data mining techniques and wish to design an efficient system, particularly one with limited storage capacity and response times.

How much is policy driving the adoption of cover crops? Evidence from four EU regions.

EU agriculture is facing increasing expectations and pressure from society and policymakers to support environmental protection and climate change mitigation. Catch and cover crops (CCC) are an underused farming practice that can potentially contribute towards these goals. Previous research is sparse and has yielded few relevant insights into CCC adoption behaviour by farmers. In this study we analyse a dataset from farm surveys in four EU regions to better understand the role of policy and non-policy factors in CCC adoption. Our data suggests that adoption rates vary widely between regions, while farm adoption intensities are low. We find that policy is by far the strongest determinant of adoption rates and adoption intensities. CCC adoption patterns have been shaped mainly by the Nitrates Directive and the Common Agricultural Policy's greening requirements. Agronomic motives are a third but much weaker impetus for adoption. Environmental and climate change considerations do not play a significant role in farmers' adoption decisions. Most non-adopters would likely become adopters if stronger policy obligations or additional subsidies were implemented. Non-adopters' responsiveness to subsidies and willingness to accept is highly varied but only weakly predictable from easily observed farm characteristics.

The impact of policy design on payment concentration in Ad-hoc disaster Relief: Lessons from the Market Facilitation and Coronavirus food Assistance programs.

This study examines the distributional implications of two recent ad-hoc disaster aid programs, the 2018 and 2019 Market Facilitation Payment (MFP) programs that have distinctly different program designs, and the federal crop insurance program. Farm-level data are used to estimate the relationship between farm size, measured by crop sales, and the distribution of program benefits. Results indicate payments are more concentrated on larger farms that receive higher per acre payments under the 2018 MFP and federal crop insurance programs. Under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, with a design similar to the 2018 MFP, payments are also more heavily concentrated on larger farms.

In pursuit of a better world: crop improvement and the CGIAR.

The CGIAR crop improvement (CI) programs, unlike commercial CI programs, which are mainly geared to profit though meeting farmers' needs, are charged with meeting multiple objectives with target populations that include both farmers and the community at large. We compiled the opinions from >30 experts in the private and public sector on key strategies, methodologies, and activities that could the help CGIAR meet the challenges of providing farmers with improved varieties while simultaneously meeting the goals of: (i) nutrition, health, and food security; (ii) poverty reduction, livelihoods, and jobs; (iii) gender equality, youth, and inclusion; (iv) climate adaptation and mitigation; and (v) environmental health and biodiversity. We review the crop improvement processes starting with crop choice, moving through to breeding objectives, production of potential new varieties, selection, and finally adoption by farmers. The importance of multidisciplinary teams working towards common objectives is stressed as a key factor to success. The role of the distinct disciplines, actors, and their interactions throughout the process from crop choice through to adoption by farmers is discussed and illustrated.

The effect of decoupling on water resources: Insights from European international trade.

The concern on the effects and potential consequences of the displacements of water resources through international trade has increased in the last decades. Today, water scarcity is considered one of the main problems in the world. Despite large advances on its quantification and understanding, further research on the anthropogenic determinants of the exchanges of water embodied in international trade is necessary. Our study aims to shed light on the trajectories and explaining factors of water exchanges in the European Union. In particular, we analyse how the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, which decoupled direct subsidies from production, affected European water consumption through agri-food exports. First, our methodology relies on the bottom-up approach to estimate European long-term exports of virtual water from 1995 to 2013. Second, we assess the effect of the reform on water consumption using panel data analysis in a trade gravity framework. Our main results show that the 2003 reform boosted extra European virtual water exports. We also observe a large heterogeneity in our sample, pointing to Mediterranean areas as the most affected by the policy reorientation. Spain, one of the most water scarce countries in the European Union, is essential to explain this link.

Monitoring environmental and climate goals for European agriculture: User perspectives on the optimization of the Copernicus evolution offer.

A vicious cycle exists between agricultural production and climate change, where agriculture is both a driver and a victim of the changing climate. While new and ambitious environmental and climate change-oriented goals are being introduced in Europe, the monitoring of these objectives is often jeopardized by a lack of technological means and a reliance on heavy administrative procedures. In particular, remote sensing technologies have the potential to significantly improve the monitoring of such goals but the characteristics of such missions should take into consideration the needs of users to guarantee return on investments and effective policy implementation. This study aims at identifying gaps in the current offer of Copernicus products for the monitoring of the agricultural sector through the elicitation of stakeholder requirements. The methodology is applied to the case study of Italy while the approach is scalable at European level. The elicitation process associates user needs to the European and national legislative framework to create a policy-oriented demand of Copernicus Earth Observation services. Results show the limitations faced by environmental managers in relation to the use of Remote Sensing technologies and the shortcomings associated with a purely technology driven approach to the development of satellite missions. Through the introduction of this flexible and user centred approach instead, this paper provides a clear overview of agro-environmental user requirements and represents the basis for the definition of an integrated agricultural service.

Adjusting eco-efficiency to greenhouse gas emissions targets at farm level - The case of Swedish dairy farms.

The purpose of this paper is to adjust the measure of eco-efficiency to account for specific sustainability targets at farm level. We assess eco-efficiency and adjust the scores according to a target of absolute levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and data from Swedish dairy farms as an illustrative example. In particular, the Swedish target of net-zero emissions in 2045 and vision of a fossil free economy are used to specify the GHG emission target used for assessing the adjusted eco-efficiency scores. We test for possible factors associated with the adjusted and unadjusted eco-efficiency using OLS-regression analysis. The study is based on data from the farm accounting data network (FADN) in year 2016 and considers the environmental pressures nutrients and contribution to global warming. Adjusted as well as unadjusted eco-efficiency scores suggest that Swedish dairy farms are highly inefficient, and that economic value added could increase by 64% (adj) or 67% (unadj) for conventional farms and by 42% (adj) or 41% (unadj) for organic farms at the same level of environmental pressure. Findings further suggest that adjusting the scores towards absolute levels of GHG emissions increases industry average efficiency. Comparing the unadjusted and adjusted efficiency scores using Spearman rank correlation indicates similar efficiency rankings between the unadjusted and adjusted scores. However, findings also indicate that adjusted and unadjusted eco-efficiency scores are associated with different influencing factors, which lends empirical support to the idea that the two types of efficiency scores are conceptually different. Policy recommendations can be made based on insights from the second stage analysis of possible influencing factors. In particular, adjusted eco-efficiency is associated with higher intensity of farming defined as output per livestock unit. Further, adjusted eco-efficiency is associated with a higher number of livestock units in conventional farms and with lower levels of labour per livestock unit in organic farms.

Shifting governance cooperatively - coordination by public discourses in the German water-food nexus.

In face of the interdependencies between policy areas in the management of common pool resources, studying nexus challenges is insightful for the exploration of new governance strategies. This includes the co-occurrence of and the interaction between different governance modes. We put forward the argument that a promising approach to explore these dynamics over time is the method of discourse network analysis. By conducting a discourse network analysis of German agricultural and water policy in a region with intensive livestock farming and large surpluses of manure that exert pressure on water and soil resources, we analyse the development of discourses within and across policy areas. We show that the analysis of public discourses contributes to the understanding of coordination between actors.

Governance networks around grasslands with contrasting management history.

Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being among the most important biodiversity hotspots at the European level. The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contradicts the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 objectives by hindering coordinated grassland governance and collaboration among the involved actors. At the European level, few attempts have been made in creating conceptual strategies for implementing conservation measures in a multi-actor and multi-scale governance setting. Our paper focuses on a comparative network analysis of grassland governance of three Romanian regions (Iron Gates Natural Park - SW; Sighisoara - Tarnava Mare - center; and Dobrogea - SE), representatives for grassland management in mountain and lowland landscapes. We investigated the structural characteristics of one-mode directed governance networks in the three protected areas (standard cohesion and reciprocity metrics, exponential random graph models), the position of actors participating in networks (node-level centrality metrics), and the perception of CAP influence on grassland governance by farmers benefiting of CAP agri-environmental payments. In Sighisoara, grassland governance has been centralized but biodiversity-friendly, while in Iron Gates, grasslands were traditionally managed through a decentralized, community-level system, and this type of governance continues to date. In Dobrogea, grassland governance was performed in an intensive, centralized state-run management regime during the communist time and by large landowners after the transition period ended. Our findings illustrate the structure of the three governance networks and dissimilar patterns of collaboration, indicating distinct particularities to be considered when exploring barriers to and options for successful governance in traditionally managed grasslands in the context of CAP measures-driven management.

The agricultural policy trilemma: On the wicked nature of agricultural policy making.

Agricultural policy has been seen as exceptional, compartmentalized and complex. Consequently, policy making in agriculture has been portrayed as particularly difficult - sometimes as an example of a 'wicked problem'. In this paper I argue that agricultural policy is more than 'just' a complex and wicked problem. It tends to be inbuilt contradictions in the form of trilemmas in agricultural policymaking, which imply that some combinations of core goals are impossible to reach. In this article I develop and illustrate the concept of an agricultural policy trilemma with Norway as a case - a plausibility probe. I argue that the concept of a trilemma may be a useful analytical tool in analysing policy and shifting policy priorities. I describe the development, and workings, of the trilemma from the 1970's to the beginning of the corona crisis in 2020.

Adoption of Farm Management Systems for Cross Compliance - An empirical case in Germany.

In Germany, Farm Management Systems (FMS) have been introduced as a support to farmers' compliance with environmental and other regulations, aiming at the increase of farm level performance and sustainable farming practices. Different kinds of FMS were developed and promulgated with various approaches, determined by each federal state's agricultural advisory system. Knowledge on the FMS' uptake and effectiveness has been lacking so far. The overall aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the implementation process and selected outcomes of the policy-driven instrumental innovation of FMS. In particular, the objectives are i) to reveal how and with what success the introduction of FMS has been realised in Germany and ii) to analyse and discuss the FMS' adoption in the federal state of Brandenburg. For the first part of the study, we elaborate a situational analysis of the policy implementation through a desk study and expert interviews. In the second part, selected results from a farmers' survey in Brandenburg are presented and a switching regression model is developed to assess the factors responsible for the uptake of FMS and to understand the role of FMS in improving the confidence in complying with Cross Compliance regulations. We found a high degree of diversity among FMS developed in the different federal states. FMS adoption rates varied, but were generally low. Institutional environment seems to have a significant influence as the same FMS had very different adoption rates among federal states. For Brandenburg, our findings show that farmers' confidence to face CC check was increased by the adoption of FMS. However, counterfactual scenario analysis proved that especially farmers who did not adopt FMS would have benefitted most if they had adopted the tool. Our study shows that there is a need for systems supporting farmers in dealing with bureaucratic requirements. Future FMS should be easy to understand, adaptable to individual farmers' needs and be available at low costs. Furthermore, there is a need to design FMS in a participatory way that integrates farmers' expectations.

Effects of a coordinated farmland bird conservation project on farmers' intentions to implement nature conservation practices - Evidence from the Swedish Volunteer & Farmer Alliance.

To increase the efficacy of agri-environmental schemes (AES), as well as farmers' environmental engagement, practitioners are increasingly turning to collective forms of agri-environmental management. As yet, empirical evidence from such approaches is relatively scarce. Here, we examined a farmland bird conservation project coordinated by BirdLife Sweden, the Swedish Volunteer & Farmer Alliance (SVFA). The key features of the SVFA were farmland bird inventories from volunteering birdwatchers and on-farm visits to individual farmers from conservation advisors for guidance on AES as well as unsubsidised practices. Using an ex-post application of the theory of planned behaviour across project participants and a randomly sampled control group of farmers we assessed how SVFA affected behavioural intentions relating to AES and unsubsidised conservation, and how the behaviour was affected by attitudes, perceived social norms and perceived behavioural control. We also included a measure of self-identity as a conservationist to assess its importance for behavioural intentions, and if SVFA stimulated this self-identity. SVFA farmers reported greater commitment to implementing AES and unsubsidised conservation, as compared to the control group. However, greater commitment was associated with more positive attitudes for unsubsidised conservation only and not for AES, underlining the inability of existing AES to prompt intrinsic motivation. There were also differences between farmers within SVFA, where farmers applying to the project were motivated by social influences, while farmers recruited by project managers were motivated by their personal beliefs regarding nature conservation. Finally, farmers' self-perceived ability to perform practices (i.e. perceived behavioural control) was important for their commitment to implementing AES as well as unsubsidised practices. Therefore, increasing farmers' awareness regarding the availability and, not least, practicability of available conservation options may be the key to successful biodiversity conservation in agricultural systems.