Principles or Practice? The Impact of Natural Resource Management on Farmer Well-being and Social Connectedness

Ensuring natural resource management (NRM) positively impacts the quality of life of a farmer is important to farmer mental health and persistence with adoption. Evidence suggests the well-being co-benefits of NRM are related to either ‘doing’ NRM practices or applying socioecological systems (SES) principles to guide NRM. We examine the relationship between a common NRM practice—tree planting, and farmer well-being, psychological distress, and social connectedness. Using hierarchical regression models, we test to see if these relationships remain with the addition of a measure of SES principles. Results show that while NRM practice was associated with improved social connectedness, only SES principles were associated with well-being. Neither NRM practice nor SES principles were associated with psychological distress. Both NRM practices and SES principles have the potential to positively impact farmers' lives and ensuring NRM programs have co-benefits to farmer well-being may help to encourage long-term engagement.