Enhancing Market Attitudes Towards IPM and Sustainable Vegetable Production Practices
Four activities have been conducted; – A desktop study of sustainability labels and ‘eco’ farming schemes. – A series of 8 focus groups, segmented by age and income, in Sydney and Melbourne – A national online survey of over 1,000 main grocery buyers on attitudes to farming, the environment, and insect contamination in food. – Production of three videos aimed at consumers, promoted using QR codes linked to a website optimized for mobile phones. Research overseas and in Australia has consistently indicated that consumers care about environmental issues and are willing to pay more for sustainably grown produce. However, intention often fails to translate into action. One barrier is that consumers generally put little thought into vegetable purchases other than price and quality. A surprising number are barely aware of country of origin labeling, with little brand recognition. An overwhelming majority of focus group participants had little idea how or where vegetables are grown. Disconnection from the growing process increases consumer sensitivity to insect contamination in fresh vegetables. Consumers are less tolerant of finding an insect if vegetables were purchased from a supermarket, especially if it is a packaged item. The resulting complaints are considered a major issue by the retailers and can result in significant costs to growers if product is rejected or recalled. Explaining the use of beneficial insects to control pests was not only new to most focus group participants, but clearly interested them. This also helped engage them in understanding sustainable production of vegetables. It was therefore decided to produce three short (~30 second) videos explaining this technique to consumers in an entertaining manner. A potential additional benefit of the videos was to increase tolerance of insects generally – “that just shows it’s been grown naturally”. The videos feature three vegetable growers, each talking about a different beneficial insect. They are availa