Education and farmers' environmental performance: a systematic literature review

Climate change and environmental degradation present significant and ongoing challenges to the agricultural sector. Formal education has been shown to equip farmers with the knowledge and skills needed to improve their environmental performance and address these problems. However, there is a notable gap in the literature regarding a comprehensive review of how farmers’ education impacts environmental outcomes. This paper aims to bridge that gap by synthesizing the results of studies exploring the role of education in explaining environmental performance. To this end, we conducted a systematic review of the existing literature. We organised the resulting 127 studies into thematic groups to provide corresponding overviews. Subsequently, we conducted a vote-count analysis of the reported direction and statistical significance of effects and associations between education and environmental performance. We observe that reporting at the variable level rather than the overall study level may have led to the importance of education for specific groups of farmers being overlooked. We suggest that the way education variables are constructed can influence the results of studies, leaving the results of vote-count analysis open to interpretation. The findings of the review provide the requisite evidence base to inform the development of effective policy measures that enhance the sustainability of farming.