Spring, 1992 (v4n3)
by Gail Feenstra, SAREP
Natural and social scientists and farmers came together to share
various approaches to agricultural systems research at a conference
and workshops sponsored by the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research
and Education Program (SAREP), November 18-20, 1991. Bill
Liebhardt, SAREP director, set the stage for the conference
with opening remarks that broadened the agricultural system to
include both environmental and social goals. The systems approach,
said Liebhardt, "is based on a theoretical construct which
suggests relationships. We are beginning to see relationships
among production practices, environmental degradation, food safety,
health and safety of agricultural workers, the structure of agriculture,
and the viability of rural communities. Researchers in universities
find that the approaches of 'reductionist science' are insufficient
to discuss the complex and dynamic issues involved in the world's
food production system. A new, expanded way of seeing the world
and our activities in it is in order." Liebhardt said agricultural
and social science researchers, farmers, Extension personnel,
consumers, farmworkers and others in the food system all need
to become involved in discussing the problems and suggesting potential
solutions.
Dialogue among researchers of many disciplines and farmers was
a key part of the conference. A major focus was the complexity
of the farm environment, which is part biophysical, part socioeconomic.
Speakers in the morning focused on farming systems research and
extension and other methods used in agricultural systems research.
Afternoon speakers discussed the environmental and social costs
of agricultural practices and current farm structure. Panels
in both the morning and afternoon provided an opportunity for
farmers, researchers, policy analysts and extension personnel
to exchange views and interact with conference participants.
The panel discussions demonstrated how agricultural research can
be enriched by the expertise and involvement of farmers and social
scientists. Two days of workshops following the conference gave
participants the opportunity to apply actual data to farming systems
analysis or talk about environmental cost accounting in greater
depth. The following discussion outlines major issues discussed
on the first day of the conference.
Farming Systems Research Methodologies
The morning session of the conference focused on farming systems
research, and featured one of the foremost practitioners and teachers
of systems analysis for on-farm agricultural research, Peter
Hildebrand, of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
at the University of Florida. Hildebrand discussed the history
and development of farming systems research and extension (FSRE)
activity worldwide, linking it to sustainable agriculture. He
outlined the different components of FSRE, a farmer participatory
systems methodology for sustainable agriculture. He discussed
diagnosing and selecting the problems, depicting alternative solutions,
designing on-farm evaluation procedures (on-farm trials), evaluating
results, disseminating acceptable solutions, making recommendations
and planning the next round of activities based on the results
of the current round.
Following Hildebrand's presentation, three researchers discussed
applications of the systems approach within the context of their
own field research projects. Steve Temple, of the UC Davis
agronomy and range science department, described the methodology
used to compare conventional, low-input, and organic cropping
systems for the Sacramento Valley. This multidisciplinary project
uses a classical replication model to make comparisons among different
treatments. (See "Farming Systems Comparison Field Day,"
Sustainable Agriculture News, Vol. 2, No.1, Fall 1989.) According
to Temple, changes in the cropping systems are evaluated through
intensive pest monitoring, soil sampling, crop growth and yield
measurements and cost/income analyses. Models that emphasize
shared leadership and attention to the soil, rotations and the
long-term perspective are all important, Temple said.
Laurie Drinkwater, of the UC Davis vegetable crops
department, described a multidisciplinary on-farm project comparing
organic, transitional and conventional tomato production systems.
Multivariate statistics were used to analyze the soil, disease,
insect and management characteristics of 20 commercial farms over
a three-year period. Intensive sampling allowed researchers to
determine how various ecological processes respond to different
amounts and types of inputs (e.g. organic vs. inorganic fertilizers).
Principal components analysis was used to determine if broad
management effects on soil properties could be distinguished from
the unavoidable variability of parent soil type on the different
farms. According to Drinkwater, management effects clearly overwhelmed
differences due to soil formation factors. The soil characteristics
most affected by management were inorganic nitrogen pools, microbial
activity, pH, electrical conductivity and, to some extent, organic
carbon. Coordinating data collection for different disciplines
has allowed researchers to examine the interaction of various
biological and management factors, for example, the effect of
the soil environment on severity of soil-borne disease. Multivariate
analysis provides the opportunity to discriminate between site-specific
and management-related differences, said Drinkwater.
Helene Murray, director of the Oregon and Washington State Universities/USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (formerly LISA) program project, discussed the use of the sondeo, a flexible on-farm interview technique used by an interdisciplinary team. A sondeo is one rapid reconnaissance tool that grew out of farming systems research in Latin America and is intended to provide a quick, preliminary sketch of farming systems. It does not use quantitative data as do more conventional research methods. Murray's research team surveyed innovative organic and conventional farmers in western Oregon and Washington. The goals of the sondeo were to: 1) identify the factors influencing farm management among innovative growers; 2) examine how innovative growers with farms of different sizes and production methods are responding to these challenges; 3) examine the usefulness of the sondeo as a research and extension tool; and 4) identify collaborating growers for longer-term project participation. The sondeo team consisted of researchers and extension personnel in horticulture, agronomy, anthropology, plant pathology, plant ecology, weed science, entomology, soil science, agricultural marketing and economics. The sondeo provided the team with the opportunity to work together and develop a common understanding of research and extension priorities, she said. Interviews were conducted with 25 farmers in a relaxed, focus-group design. The informal approach provided a good learning and team-building environment for the sondeo team. Results of the sondeo show that the major off-farm influences on the producers in the sondeo group relate to labor availability and public concern over the use of pesticides. Many of the growers, whether organic or conventional, are responding to environmental and social pressures and crop management problems with innovative management, Murray said. In fact, the sondeo revealed that the innovative growers in this study have much in common and much to offer researchers and other growers.
Working Relationships
Yolo County farmers Tony Turkovich and Raul Adamchak
participated in a panel with the morning speakers, where they
discussed working relationships in agricultural systems research.
Turkovich stressed the importance of regular and frequent meetings
between farmers and researchers so that practical problems can
be dealt with in a timely manner. Adamchak suggested that even
more farmer-directed research is needed in order to address the
problems that farmers really face. Farmer participation in research
has been sparse so far. Helene Murray reiterated that farmers
have been key members of sondeo teams. Methods to facilitate
good working relationships in the teams have included extensive
use of conference calls, and becoming aware of different learning
styles among team members. Overall, participants and speakers
agreed that more farmer input in the design and implementation
of on-farm research should be encouraged.
Environmental & Social Accounting
The afternoon session switched gears from farming systems research
to broader analyses of environmental and social costs of current
farming practices and structures. Paul Faeth, a senior
associate in the Washington, D.C. World Resources Institute's
(WRI) economics and technology research program, began the discussion
with a presentation of WRI's study, Paying the Farm Bill: Agricultural
Policy and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture, an examination
of U.S. agricultural policy that explicitly includes economic
measures of sustainability. According to Faeth, farmers do not
include an accounting of sustainable resource use-such as soil
and water-in calculating net income. Yet, by ignoring these costs,
farmers who do not use resource-conserving farming practices pay
the price through lost productivity. Environmental costs will
eventually be borne by society. Unfortunately, government agricultural
policies and support programs make things worse by discouraging
farmers from adopting resource-conserving strategies. Since environmental
costs are ignored, farmers' income is overstated in the present,
leading to distorted choices among available farming practices.
Faeth described how the WRI study used quantitative methods of
resource accounting for soil erosion to compare different farming
systems. WRI researchers asked the question, Which system
would farmers and society pick, given five different policy options?
The data for the report came from long-term field trials in Pennsylvania
and Nebraska. Soil erosion rates and long-term productivity losses
were analyzed for each site and technology using the USDA Erosion
Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) Model. The soil erosion
estimates take into account recreational losses, harbor dredging,
municipal water treatment, steam power cooling, flooding, navigation,
roadside ditch clearing, and irrigation. Output from this model
was then used with USDA estimates of regional damages caused by
soil erosion to estimate the off-farm costs associated with conventional
and alternative crop rotations. Results show that where erosion-prone
soils are causing environmental damage on and off the farm, resource-conserving
production systems are economically superior. Farmers who adopt
these resource-conserving systems may suffer some short-term income
loss during the transition phase, but are likely to make long-term
financial gains by improving their land's productivity. (See
Faeth et al., Components, No.2, Vol.3, Summer 1991.)
Farm Scale
Dean MacCannell and Isao Fujimoto, researchers in
the Applied Behavioral Science Department at UC Davis, focused
on the social impacts of agriculture as they relate to the structure
of agriculture (scale, technology choices and control of resources),
community development and sustainability. MacCannell reported
on the comparative community studies he and Fujimoto have worked
on that tested a hypothesis put forth in 1944 by Walter Goldschmidt,
a University of California, Los Angeles anthropologist. In an
ethnographic comparison of Arvin and Dinuba, two towns in the
Central Valley, Goldschmidt attributed differences in the quality
of life to the structure of the surrounding agriculture. He concluded
that smaller-scale family-owned and operated farms are crucial
to the health and well-being of rural communities. MacCannell's
work through the UC Davis Macrosocial Accounting Project was to
improve Goldschmidt's research design by doing macro-comparisons
of 80 California Central Valley communities or 100 sunbelt counties.
This research found that Goldschmidt's hypothesis withstood more
rigorous testing. According to MacCannell, the relationship can
be described by an "inverted J" curve, with quality
of life in rural communities on the vertical axis and farm size
on the horizontal axis. Quality of life improves as farm size
increases until about 300 acres. Then, said MacCannell, quality
of life decreases significantly as farm size increases further.
In a similar vein, Fujimoto's study looked at the structure and
location of communities in relation to the control of water.
His recent work examined the role of coalition building in bringing
about sustainable development in agriculture and communities in
the Central Valley.
Ag Coalition
Larry Yee, Ventura County UC Cooperative Extension director,
followed Fujimoto's discussion with a real-life example of
coalition building in Ventura County, the Ventura County Food
Safety Study Group. Galvanized by the "Alar scare"
in 1989, Larry Yee and Tim Wallace, an Extension economist
in agriculture and resource economics at UC Berkeley, formed a
coalition of diverse individuals including environmentalists,
agricultural leaders, the League of Women Voters, food retailers,
farm labor and consumer advocates and chemical testing labs. The
coalition was created to explore ways to improve the credibility
of the food system in Ventura County, and in the long run, to
reduce the use of pesticides. Yee said it was a practical, grassroots
attempt to involve people in the community in discussion and decision-making
about their food system. The process was an open, flexible one
in which the group set the agenda and "owned the process,"
he noted. Through constant input and feedback from all members
of the group, mutual education was fostered, issues were clarified,
and communication and problem solving improved, Yee said. Most
significantly, trust has been built among representatives of diverse
and sometimes antagonistic interests. Currently, the Food Safety
Study Group is exploring ways to expand the process to the larger
community.
Social Science & Farming
A second panel, including all of the afternoon speakers, and Mas
Masumoto, a Del Rey farmer with California Clean Growers,
reflected on how the work of social scientists might complement
or enrich farming systems research. Faeth commented on the need
to improve our economic analysis of the "factors of production,"
considering natural resources as assets in an explicit way in
figuring net farm income. Farming systems research should include
a more complete notion of economic accountability. He also noted
that if WRI's analysis is taken seriously by policymakers, it
should strengthen the case for devoting more federal research
monies to sustainable agriculture.
MacCannell suggested that whole farm case studies could benefit
from the expertise of anthropologists or ethnographers. He also
noted that a neglected and potentially fruitful area of research
would consider how "economies of scale," studied from
an economic perspective, mesh with what is known about social
costs of large-scale agriculture. Fujimoto went even further
to suggest the need to expand ways of measuring the impacts of
agricultural practices on rural communities. He noted that commonly
used quantitative economic models describe impacts in dollars
and cents. Fujimoto suggested the need to develop more creative
ways to measure the qualitative impacts of agriculture on communities.
Masumoto concluded there is a need to recapture local knowledge
about farming systems, from farmers and from communities. He
said it is important to emphasize that farmers, consumers, researchers,
farmworkers and policymakers are a community, and thus have a
need to speak the language of interdisciplinary work.
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