Increasing The Value Of Knowledge

In Denmark there is a developed and well-organised advisory system. However, there is room for improvement. Many advisors experience that the farmers don’t follow their advice, and therefore the same problems are discussed over and over. This entails that the advisors feel they lack impact and farmers feel the advising is inefficient and expensive. The job is therefore to make the utility value of the advising more visible, to motivate the farmers to exploit the full potentials of their production, and to make it clear to the farmer that the work of the advisors isn’t just an expense, but a way to increase profits. The paper describes our work with advisers and farmers to find and develop methods, which can assist in obtaining these objectives. • Key account manager • No Cure No Pay • Benchmarking as a tool for motivation. In some regions the “key account manager”- idea is developing. The farmer has one advisor who is responsible for customer relations including optimisation of the relationship between the various advisors and the farmer. The paper describes how the advisors ensure that they meet the farmers’ expectations. To make the value of advises even more obvious, we also work with contracts with integrated objectives for the farm. This ensures that the advisors are aware of the farmer’s expectations and that the follow up part of the advising is at natural part of the process. “No cure no pay” has proven to be rather difficult to practise in relation to farm advising. The paper describes the possibilities and the obstructions of this method. Danish farmers find it very motivating to compare their results with others. The advisory service uses several tools in order to benchmark customers.