Social Learning among Organic Farmers and the Application of the Communities of Practice Framework

ABSTRACT

The paper examines social learning processes among organic farmers and explores the application of the Community of Practice (CoP) model in this context. The analysis employed utilises an approach based on the CoP model, and considers how, or whether, this approach may be useful to understand social learning among farmers. The CoP model is applied to case studies of social learning fora among organic farmers. The case studies are compiled from in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observation with farmers and other actors, and the data are analysed with reference to three dimensions of the CoP model, namely mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoires. Farmers associate and engage in social learning more readily with peers determined by similar attitudes to farm business, farming styles and understanding of what organic agriculture entails. Such associations support the hypothesis that CoPs are self-organising structures that generate their knowledge in sympathy with community definition and identity. A CoP framework applied within relatively unstructured and dispersed communities, such as described in this paper, emphasises the fluid nature of CoPs, and their essentially self-organising nature. Extension approaches may be facilitated by regarding farmers as de-facto members of CoPs and by understanding how CoPs may form and develop. The CoP model is applied as a heuristic to examine social learning processes in organic farming.

Keywords:

• Community of Practice
• Organic farmers
• Social learning
• Extension

Acknowledgements

The empirical work for this paper was carried out with funding from an UK Economic and Social Research Council doctoral studentship.

Notes

1. ‘Practice’ has been referred to in discussion of CoP as a common-sense way to indicate the routine and normal ways groups of individuals perform those activities by which the community is defined, but ‘practice’ is itself a concept about which different disciplines generate differing understandings. Although there may not be a unified ‘Practice theory’ (Schatzki, 2001), practices are commonly seen as arrays of activity; however, conceptions of ‘activity’ may also vary over different disciplines, in some cases to include the role and influence of material, non-human entities. Practices may also be said to be embodied and exercised in intimate interaction with artefacts and natural objects (Fox, 2000).

2. Members agree to provide a minimum quantity for sale through the marketing group, but they are free to supply other market channels according to their own initiative.

3. Farming Connect is a farmer advisory service organised by the Welsh Assembly Government.

4. Individual farmers who are nominally members of Group C do participate in organised events and discussion groups elsewhere, often with conventional farmers, suggesting that they are not all averse to interaction per se, but that they have not found or created a community of practice, or of interest within their own neighbourhood.

5. These include farmer-led discussion groups known as Grazing Groups and Grassland Societies as well as processor-led discussion groups.

6. Particularly so for the neighbourhood group, which is a construct for the purpose of the research project.