Using policy discourses to open up the conceptual space of farm education: inspiration from a Belgian farm education network

Abstract

Farm education organized by farmers and directed towards students and groups of citizens is a relatively new practice often considered as one specific business strategy to diversify farmers’ income. Although we endorse the importance of an economic rationale we argue that this conceptualization undermines a diversity of perspectives on educative processes that address societal transformation and the political role of intergroup and interpersonal deliberation. In this paper, we start from the observation that on the European level three different competing policy paradigms or discourses are being advocated. Reasoning from a discourse-analytical perspective these policy discourses cannot be considered as mere ideas floating in abstraction but constitute interpretative frames that have concrete implications for practices in the agro-food domain. Along these lines, we reveal three analytically distinct educative practices by specifying how each discourse articulates meaning to make sense of farm education in terms of goals, relations and actions. Our theoretical assumptions on education are informed by John Dewey's pragmatist conception of education which starts from the idea that the mutual recognition of social interests are co-constitutive for the experience of learning. We use a case study on a regional farm education network in Belgium to illustrate how farmer's educative efforts can be enrolled differently in educational practices according to different discursive frames and how these different educational practices enable or constrain social and educational arrangements that promote a sustainability transition. We conclude that farm education is a multifaceted educational practice and reflect on its potentialities and pitfalls to foster (emancipatory) agency to re-balance conflicting interests towards sustainable development.

Keywords:

• Farm education
• discourse analysis
• sustainability
• John Dewey

Notes

1. A setting can here be considered as the discursive and material-functional structure of a practice, which guides routinized behavior within that practice. Agency (individual motivations, personal experiences) as a dimension of what constitutes a practice is here not considered. For a more detailed account on the relation between structure and agency in practices see Crivits and Paredis (2013).

2. As Dewey puts it in Democracy and Education (136): ‘Mind appears in experience as ability to respond to present stimuli on the basis of anticipation of future possible consequences, and with a view to controlling the kind of consequences that are to take place. The things, the subject matter known, consist of whatever is recognized as having a bearing upon the anticipated course of events, whether assisting or retarding it.’

3. Based on Hajer (2009), Dryzek (2005), Wesselink et al. (2013) and Stone (2001) we can refer to the following constitutive elements of discourse: basic entities (facts, notions that are taken for granted); assumptions about natural relationships (causal stories); agents and their motives (interests); metaphors, storylines and other rhetorical devices (symbols).

4. Three dairy farmers, one beef cattle farmer, one deer farmer, one pig farmer and one strawberry grower were interviewed.

5. One farmer had already been interviewed. Five other farmers had participated in the study trip.

6. As one farmer put it: ‘All things we do, are here shown in distinct elements. It is so, so and so (gestures three columns). Structure. We do not often think of this. We are so busy on our farms, we are doing so many things, that in fact we do not realize what we are doing anymore. They have to help us a little, we are teacher, we are care farm, we are farmer that is [the latter] where we start’ (Woman, Forties, workshop, 2014).

7. Outside the context of our case there are international examples of very large scale farms that engage in farm education see for instance www.fofarms.com.

8. Some schools work with a thematic week on agriculture, with the visit as a final piece, other schools organize extramural internships with farmers as a permanent option for students, and some motivated teachers commit to teach on the farm site. However, these are rather exceptions and many schools have built no routine to embed agriculture education in their educational structure and content.

9. These cultural contextualities cannot be addressed here in more detail but deserve further attention as they not only determine the potentialities of farm education, but refer to a wider set of values and ways of thinking related to the relationship between agriculture and society at large.

10. This need not be utopic. One example is found in the genesis of a Flemish local food system (food teams). In this case, a class on globalization effects on agriculture spurred a dialogue between citizens and farmers, which eventually led to the establishment of the alternative food network that aims to secure farmer income and local consumption (Crivits and Paredis 2013).