Journal Article

Dairy farming and biodiversity: A narrative analysis in contrasting socio‐ecological contexts

Nijland, Hanneke J., Oostvogels, Vincent J., Etienne, Rébecca, Boer, Imke J. M., Ripoll‐Bosch, Raimon, Allart, Lucie, Dumont, Bertrand

2025

Overview

It is crucial that biodiversity conservation initiatives in agriculture take into account how farmers understand and value their relationships with nature. However, while highly relevant for pan‐European conservation work, insight into differences and commonalities in farmers' views across socio‐ecologically different European regions is still lacking. Therefore, we studied how farmers describe the relationship between how they farm and biodiversity in two contrasting regions: the Netherlands and the French Massif Central. In both regions, we included two specific study areas. We focused on dairy farming, as it is a key sector in terms of socio‐economic importance and biodiversity impact in both regions. In each area, we conducted 15 in‐depth interviews focusing on the impacts of the farm on biodiversity and vice versa, as well as on the relational importance of biodiversity to the farmer. We allowed farmers to use the term ‘biodiversity’ in their own words. We analysed our data using the Integrated Nature Futures Framework (I‐NFF), a recently proposed framework for analysing what people value positively and negatively about nature‐related matters. Six main narratives emerged, which we named ‘farming WITH biodiversity’, ‘farming FROM biodiversity—valorising what is there’, ‘farming FROM biodiversity—innovating for sustainability’, ‘farming FOR biodiversity’, ‘farming SEPARATE from biodiversity—out of necessity’ and ‘farming SEPARATE from biodiversity—out of conviction’. These narratives vary in how farmers conceptualise biodiversity, perceive and value interactions between farming and biodiversity, and define problems and solutions. Although we encountered partly the same narratives in the Dutch and Massif Central areas, we also noted considerable differences. In the Dutch areas, we frequently encountered ‘FOR’, which strongly depicts biodiversity as an additional service that requires payment, and ‘SEPARATE—out of conviction’, which argues for production‐intensive systems. In the Massif Central areas, we virtually never encountered these narratives and instead more often encountered ‘WITH’, which depicts farming as naturally integrated with biodiversity. Moreover, the narratives had strong region‐specific details. We close by discussing how better insight into such differences and commonalities can help foster more understanding engagement with farmers on the topic of biodiversity. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc,Wiley Open Access,Wiley
• Subject: Agricultural sciences / Agriculture / Biodiversity / Biodiversity conservation / Case studies / Conservation / Dairy farming / Dairy farms / disvalues / Economic importance / Farmers / Farming / Futures / governance / Grasslands / human–nature relationships / Integrated Nature Futures Framework (I‐NFF) / Life Sciences / Livestock / Massifs / narrative analysis / plural valuation / Research design / stakeholder inclusion / Stakeholders / Valuation / Values