Abstract
Food processors and governments aim to motivate dairy farmers to improve udder health management. Such farmers’ decisions are driven not only by economic considerations, but also by other motivations, cognitions and professional and personal networks. Little is known about integrated influence of such aspects on adoption of improved udder health management. The effect of these aspects on success of the current tools used to motivate farmers to improve udder health is also unknown. An agent-based model that simulates the simultaneous decisions to adopt udder health measures of multiple heterogeneous dairy farmers (agents) interacting with each other has been developed. The model reveals emerging macro-level patterns of system behaviour, when individual behaviour of each farmer is defined by economic considerations, cognitions and farmers’ networks. The collective behaviour is presented by the total number of farmers adopting certain udder health improvement measures over time. The integrated analysis of farmers’ behaviour with regard to adoption of udder health measures indicates that stimulation of adoption of different measures require different approaches to designs of incentive system and communication campaigns. Intensive communication campaigns seem to be better designed per individual measure, since intensive communication might be not needed for all the measures available. For the measures, adoption of which could be more difficult due to extra expenditures involved, communication campaign and interacting with other farmers alone are not very effective. Stimulation of adoption of such measures requires putting an economic incentive system in place. Farmers’ personal motivation and network are also shown to reinforce the adoption of udder health; though network is really effective only for low motivated farmers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ajzen I, Fishbein M (1980) Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA, 279 pp
Epstein JM, Axtell A (1996) Growing artificial societies: Social science from the bottom up. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 208 pp
Farmer JD, Foley D (2009) The economy needs agent-based modeling. Nature 460:685–686
Hogeveen H, Huijps K, Lam TJGM (2011) Economic aspects of mastitis: New developments. New Zealand Veterinary Journal 59:16–23
Huijps K, Hogeveen H, Antonides G, Valeeva NI, Lam TJGM, Oude Lansink AGJM (2010a) Farmer’s decision making process: economic behaviour with respect to mastitis management. European Review of Agricultural Economics 93:115–124
Huijps K, Hogeveen H, Lam TJGM, Oude Lansink AGJM (2010b) Costs and efficacy of management measures to improve udder health on Dutch dairy farms. Journal of Dairy Science 93:115–124
Huijps K, Lam TJGM, Hogeveen H (2008) Costs of mastitis: facts and perception. Journal of Dairy Research 75:113–120
Jansen J, Renes RJ, Lam TJGM (2010a) Evaluation of two communication strategies to improve udder health management. Journal of Dairy Science 93:604–612
Jansen J, Steuten CDM, Renes RJ, Aarts N, Lam TJGM (2010b) Debunking the myth of the hard-to-reach farmer: effective communication on udder health. Journal of Dairy Science 93:1296–1306
Valeeva NI, Hogeveen H, Lam TJGM (2007) Motivation of dairy farmers to improve mastitis management. Journal of Dairy Science 90:4466–4477
Verwaart, T. and Valeeva, N., 2011. An agent-based model of food safety practices adoption. In Osinga, S., Hofstede, G.J. and Verwaart, T. (eds.) Emergent results of artificial economics. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, vol. 652: 103-114.
Wilensky, U., 1999. NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Wageningen Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Valeeva, N.I., Verwaart, T. (2011). Udder health management improvement: Insights from agent-based modelling. In: Hogeveen, H., Lam, T.J.G.M. (eds) Udder Health and Communication. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-742-4_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-742-4_19
Publisher Name: Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen
Online ISBN: 978-90-8686-742-4
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)