We used the framework to characterize the diversity of farmers’ experiments and identified four clusters.
Here, we propose for the first time a generic framework to describe farmers’ experiments at a short time scale based on the consistency between the Design, Management, and Evaluation stages. The data collected in the interviews were first analyzed to build a descriptive framework of farmers’ experiments, after which hierarchical cluster analysis was used to analyze the diversity of the farmers’ experiments. To conduct the interviews with the farmers, each experiment was described in three stages: (1) designing the experiment, (2) managing it in real time, and (3) evaluating the results of the experiment. Experiments on agroecological practices were characterized, located along a timeline, and discussed with them. The farmers practiced conventional or organic farming and cultivated either arable or market garden crops. Seventeen farmers in south eastern France were surveyed. In this study, we examined the short-term experimental activity, i.e., experiments carried out at a yearly scale in pre-defined fields. However, how agroecological practices are tested by farmers in their own experiments is still poorly known. A promising activity for farmers is experimentation because it answers their needs and helps them learn. Rather than searching for the best practices for large-scale transfer, it would be more efficient to help farmers find their own solutions. Based on our conceptual understanding of the determinants of farm resilience, we recommend approaches that augment farmer entrepreneurship, support farmer organizations, and strengthen farmer-buyer relationships.Īgroecology questions the production of generic knowledge.
Secondly, based on a literature review, we propose mechanisms through which farmer entrepreneurship, membership in farmer organization, and farmer-buyer relationships may influence farmer adaptive capacity and thereby farm resilience.
The emphasis on adaptive capacity responds to a conceptual weakness inherent in studies that present socio-ecological systems as static systems. To address this knowledge gap, we firstly develop a novel conceptual framework based on determinants of farm resilience and farmer adaptive capacity as a pathway through which farm resilience is strengthened. Yet, the question of what determines farm resilience in a smallholder farming setup remains fuzzy. For instance, recent policy recommendations present farm resilience as a silver bullet in dealing with agricultural risks and uncertainty, and in achieving sustainable agri-food systems. The concept of resilience gained traction in academic, policy, and development discourse in recent years, yet its conceptualization and application at the farm level has received little attention. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists (more replications, studies performed under the relevant local conditions), but also some comparative disadvantages (less stringent controls, less precise evaluations). Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions (work methods etc.) to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means to deal with confounding factors. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners.
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