The Three Layers of Farmer Decision-Making

1. System Reality Layer

This layer reflects the farm's physical and economic reality.

It includes:

• pasture performance

• animal health

• labour availability

• infrastructure condition

• climate pressures

• regulation

• cashflow

These forces create system pressures.

Those pressures determine what problems rise in importance.

Example:

• labour shortage

• declining fertility

• poor pasture productivity

• machinery reliability issues

This layer largely determines what problems farmers must solve.

2. Priority Stack Layer

Farmers cannot fix everything at once.

They have to allocate limited:

• money

• time

• learning capacity

• staff resource

across competing improvements. This creates the priority stack.

Examples competing in the stack:

• pasture renewal

• labour-saving technology

• infrastructure improvement

• machinery replacement

• environmental compliance

Elements within the priority stack compete on multiple dimensions. Degree of urgency vs ease of implementation vs cost vs ROI vs long-term benefit vs immediate benefit vs farmer interest vs social acceptance.

Farmer decision-making involves evaluating many trade-offs. It can be complicated!

3. Solution Selection Layer

Once a problem rises high enough in the stack, the farmer then decides how to solve it.

At this stage, the influences are:

• advisors

• contractors

• suppliers

• product features

• price

• brand

• distribution

This is the layer many agribusiness companies focus on. It’s where marketing and product competition occur. Yet going upstream of this can yield benefits if the right levers can be identified and pulled.