What sources are used by stakeholders in Ireland and Europe to obtain information to improve flock profitability?

Application To achieve effective communication to all stakeholder groups involved in sheep production many sources of media/communication are required.

Introduction
Poor adoption of technologies maybe due to stakeholders being un-aware of their existence. Successful transfer of findings/technology from research is critical to improving efficiency within any farm enterprise. Keady et al. [1] concluded that to achieve successful communication of technical/practical information the choice of media depends on the target stakeholder group. The objective of this survey was to identify the main sources that stakeholders (e.g., farmers, veterinarians) use to obtain information on flock nutrition and health.

Material and methods
Eurosheep, an EU/international Thematic Network (grant agreement No. 863056) on sheep production designed to stimulate exchange of knowledge, best practice and innovation between research and stakeholders, with the objective of increasing flock profitability. From May to July 2020, a survey was circulated online to stakeholders involved in sheep production in all Eurosheep countries (Ireland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Turkey and UK); language used was country specific. One of the questions asked was to ‘rank in order of importance the main information sources that you use to get information on flock nutrition and health’. A score was assigned to each of the 13 choices: the first choice (most important) was scored 13 to the thirteenth choice (least important) scored 1. The final rank of the main sources of information was based on the sum of the scores.

Results A total of 1163 surveys were completed. The respondents were classified into three groups, namely Europe (Eur: France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Turkey and UK), Ireland farmers (IE-F, n = 125) and Ireland other (IE-O, n = 38). The main sources of information on flock health and nutrition are presented in Table 1. All groups ranked peer-to-peer, farming press and technical advisors/consultants as key sources of information. Whilst veterinarians were identified as the most important source of information in Eur, IE-F and IE-O respondents ranked them 6th and 8th, respectively. IE-O ranked farm open days 4th whilst IE-F ranked them 7th which may be a reflection of the proportion of each stakeholder group attending such events. Whilst IE-F ranked discussion groups as the main source of information on ewe productivity [1], discussion groups were ranked 5th in this survey. Similar to the findings of Keady et al. [1] the 3 categories of respondents ranked technical sales personnel and social media as the least important sources of information. Respondents ranked seminars/conferences/ workshops as unimportant sources of information - being ranked 11th, 9th and 8th by IE-F, IE-O and Eur groups, respectively.