Educating for a Clean and Green Future: 
Australian and World Farming Systems in the next Decade 

Dr. Roger Packham

Invited keynote paper, 
12th Biannual Conference of the National Association of Agricultural Educators Hobart
Tasmania, January13-18, 2002

Dr. Roger Packham
Head, Agriculture and Rural Development Academic Group
University of Western Sydney
Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW 1797
Australia. 
E-mail: R.Packham@uws.edu.au

In the next decade, Australian and World farming systems will need to feed over six billion people – ultimately that is what agriculture is all about. How will they do this? How will food security be assured when already the world has about 800 million people in the developing world affected by hunger and malnutrition – not due to a lack of world food production, but due to more complex human issues relating to who grows the food, how and where it is grown, how it is distributed, and who has access to it? Is there a place for genetic engineering? And what should be the role for educators when relating to these issues?

The Green Revolution with its package of technologies utilising hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and weedicides, as well as large-scale irrigation, resulted in tremendous gains in food production. The current problems of world hunger are not a function of demand outstripping supply. They are a problem of access to food and food producing resources. The Green Revolution was hailed as a "miracle’, yet this view concentrates only on the outcome of increased yields, while ignoring the social and ecological costs.

Many people now believe that any technological policy for rural and agricultural development must be judged, among other factors, on whether it increases or decreases inequity in the distribution of and access to resources and food, and whether it ensures the sustainability of resource use. This applies both to Western industrialised agriculture and to the agriculture of developing countries. Currently, in Western developed countries, there is acknowledged evidence of inequity and decline in rural communities, both socially and environmentally, while in developing countries, there is strong evidence that the green revolution has similarly increased inequity, and that large-scale use of fertilisers is particularly adversely affecting soils and leading to a decline in total yields. The proposed Green Revolution II (sometimes called the evergreen revolution!) based on genetic engineering has also been shown to be incompatible with sustainable agriculture and equality of access to agricultural resources (Altieri, Rosset and Thrupp, 2000; Simms, 1999; Shiva 1999).

Emerging from the discourse on food security, is an increasing recognition of the value in the developed world of lower-input and organic agricultural production systems, and these systems are spreading rapidly in response to both public demand, and, in some cases, government policy as a way to reduce environmental damage from industrial agriculture, especially in European countries such as Denmark. For the developing world, there is increasing recognition of a need to support a viable low-input, small-farm agriculture that will overall be more productive and be of greater benefit to the alleviation of hunger than the current focus on industrial-agriculture, monocropping, and export-orientated farming systems. It has also been suggested that such an agriculture needs to apply the principles of agroecology, which integrates indigenous knowledge, which the Green Revolution totally ignored, with current technical knowledge, encompassing not only production goals but also considerations of social equity and ecological sustainability.

These approaches cannot be developed "top-down" or in a way that is widely applicable, but instead are best be developed participatively since they rely on local farming knowledge and techniques that are adjusted to different local conditions, the management of diverse on-farm resources and inputs, as well as the incorporation of contemporary scientific understanding. They can also restore degraded agricultural lands, and assist smallholders in an affordable and ecologically sustainable way to intensify production in marginal areas – areas that again have been ignored by the Green Revolution. While critics of such approaches suggest such alternative production systems will result in lower yields, the evidence is increasingly indicating the opposite, particularly when broad measures of sustainability and unit-area productivity are taken, rather than just single-crop performance measures (Pretty, 1998&1999; Altieri, Rosset and Thrupp, 2000). For example, Pretty (1998) notes that 40,000 farmers in the USA are using sustainable agricultural technologies that are using 60-70% less fertiliser pesticide and energy, yet their yields are roughly comparable to other industrial farming systems; these farmers also spend more money on local goods and services, thereby helping to sustain more viable rural communities.

Even back in the 1980’s, research was exploring these issues. For example, Conway (1985) pointed out that while new technology can greatly increase short-term productivity measured per hectare, or per unit of labour or input, such technology has also lowered the sustainability, equitability, stability and productivity of agricultural systems. He illustrated these concepts as shown in figure 1. Here, Sustainability refers to the ability of a farming system to maintain production through time in the context of a changing socio-economic and biophysical environment. Equitability is a measure of how evenly the products of the farming system are distributed among the local producers and consumers; it is represented by an adequate income, good nutrition, and satisfactory leisure, but also by the equity of distribution of income and opportunities within production communities. Stability is the constancy of production under a given set of environmental, economic and management conditions, and some see this as being made up of three sub-categories: management stability – choosing the set of technologies best adapted to the farmers’ needs and resources; economic stability – the farmers’ ability to predict market prices of inputs and products to sustain farm income, often requiring a trade-off between production and stability; and cultural stability – the maintenance of the sociocultural organisation and context that nurtures farming systems through generations. Finally Productivity is the quantitative measure of the rate and amount of production per unit of land or input: Yield per unit area will reveal one type of productivity, but a different pattern may emerge for a farming system when analysed using energy ratios. In evaluating productivity yields, it is also often forgotten that most farmers (and particularly small farmers) place a higher value on reducing risk than they do on maximising production, and that they are more interested in optimising the productivity of scarce farm resources than in increasing land or labour productivity. Farmers will also choose a particular production technology based on decisions made for the entire farming system, not only for a particular crop.

Production and productivity gains in agriculture have not been without cost, particularly to the social life of rural people, and of particular concern to all (not just rural) people, are the many ecological consequences. Issues such as salination, desertification, soil erosion, acidification of soils, land clearing, pesticide and disease resistance, habitat loss, endangering of native species, and general biodiversity loss have become of increasing concern to many sections of the community. For example, competing demands for water from irrigators and others can now affect the fate of governments to be re-elected. In parts of Australia, massive tree replanting is underway to try to overcome the adverse effects of salination from rising water tables, while paradoxically farmers and graziers are still clearing vast areas of trees and shrubs in other parts of the country. It seems fair to say that increased productivity at the expense of the environment will soon not be an option, as costs will not be able to be externalised.

Figure1: Some systems properties of farming systems and indices of performance   (After Conway, 1985)

The idea of "waves" of agricultural development (Bawden, 1995) illustrates the necessity to look beyond the traditional approach of only seeking answers to these issues through experimental agricultural science. When first settled by Europeans, Australia was a hostile place to the new colonialists, who relied totally on imported food from England, unlike the local population who were entirely self-sufficient through hunting and gathering. Gradually, people arrived from Europe with some knowledge of farming practices, and through trial and error, underpinned by experience and reflection on practice, the colony became self-sufficient. Science, using theories and concepts, then investigated why practices worked or did not work, and gradually the knowledge spread. This led to a production developmental phase, where agriculture (and agricultural exports) grew rapidly, based on this knowledge from science. A third wave of development was the productivity phase, underpinned by economics and farm management, where input-output ratios became increasingly important for the development of agriculture. However, as noted above, this often involved the externalising of costs onto the environment, as well as ignoring other important measures of the health of farming systems (figure 1). To counter this, it could now be suggested that Australia has entered a new development phase with a focus on sustainability. For this, another way of looking at issues is required, beyond only reflection on experience, agricultural science or agricultural economics and farm management, and that uses a systemic or holistic view.

Systemic thinking requires people to look at sets of interacting activities. In the way I am talking about them here, systems are constructs of the mind – ways of thinking about real things, not real things in themselves. It is necessary to draw a boundary around those things that defines the area over which the system has relative control to meet its purposes, with the co-created supra-system being called the system’s environment, and being made up of those things that affect the nominated system, yet are not able to be controlled by the system. The boundary is thus a critical construct that is value-laden, and is one of the fundamental systemic concepts (Midgley, 2000). People wishing to improve the system in some way, need to debate the purposes of the system, what would be considered to be an improvement, what constitutes the system and its environment, and why the boundary has included some things, but not others?

Systems are themselves made up of sub-systems in a recursive way, and the choice of what hierarchical level (where hierarchy is used with an enabling rather than oppressive meaning) to select as one’s focus for a system of interest in this continuous hierarchy is again open to dialogue. It is not that there are definitive answers to these questions, since the answers are what the critical questioning community of concern decides they are – a constructivist philosophy, with an emphasis on the critical questioning aspect. The key issue is the learning that occurs through this dialogue. This learning may result in progress being made through trial and error, or agricultural science or productivity considerations, or through systemic methods – what is important is that the assumptions being held by all members of the community of concern are drawn out and understood – and the community of concern must include (or at least have people speaking on their behalf) all those affected by proposed changes (improvements) to the system. It is a participative approach.

When applied to the improvement of situations, such as those of a farming system, the concept emerges of Systemic Development. Here the system of focus is an organisation of some kind, be it a farm, a commercial company, a community, or a government or non-government group, or the like. Systemic Development is a set of ideas that promotes thinking and acting that will ensure the continued development of the organisation (system) through participatory learning, with concern concentrating on the three systemic levels – the organisation as the system-in-focus; its sub-systems, particularly the learning subsystem; and the supra-system, or immediate system environment. Maintaining alignment between all three of these levels, despite constant change, is the goal – as is the goal of sustainability for farming systems. These ideas are illustrated in figure 2 (Bawden, 1999) by what is known as the Systemic Development Holon.

Figure 2: The Systemic Development Holon    (After Bawden, 1999)

Thus the farming system’s managers have to continually learn about the nature of the system’s environment, and plan strategies, allocate resources and ensure operations are carried out, that will enable the organisation and the farming system to survive and flourish. This is best achieved through experiential learning, coupled with the individual learners’ own insights through what is termed inspirational learning (Bawden, 1999).

For example, vital issues that will effect the environment of Australian and World farming systems over the next decade are arising from many of the meetings of global leaders that are well known – such as Rio, Seattle, Kyoto, Genoa and the like – but for which the agreements that eventually emerge are much less reported, understood or known about than are the controversies or riots associated with the meetings. Why is there so much concern with these agreements, and what are they? Agreements arising from the Earth summit (Rio) and its consequences, include such things as the agenda 21 commission on sustainable development, the convention on climate change, and the consultative group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that maintains so-called seed and gene ‘banks’ Then there are the trade-related ones, including the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that sets international trading rules; the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPs) that allows for patents on living organisms amongst other things; the Codex Alimentarius that sets the rules governing food standards; the Biosafety Protocol, arising out of the convention on Biological diversity, that is so critical to the control or otherwise of genetic engineering and other aspects of agricultural biodiversity; and lastly the Arhus (a town in Denmark)convention, that supposedly allows access, within the context of environmental decision making, to information, to justice, and to public participation in decision making.

There are two broad streams apparent in these agreements, and unfortunately the two often conflict with each other, creating a confusing and complex situation, but never the less have far-reaching consequences for farming systems in the next decade. The first stream relates to the development of world trade and the emergence of the WTO, as illustrated in figure 3, while the second stream relates to environmental sustainability, and the agreements arsing out of the Earth summit at Rio in 1992, and are illustrated in figure 4.

Systemic Development is concerned with managing the complexity of situations such as these that are facing farming systems, and of learning about and improving them. It takes a multi-perspective approach, and thus is concerned with technical, ethical, social, practical, aesthetic, scientific, political and ecological aspects of any proposed change. Changes are only implemented after a critical dialogue has occurred amongst relevant stakeholders, with all the assumptions behind new proposals being open to question – what is an improvement, who are the relevant stakeholders, what methods should be used, what are the systemic features of the issues, and what power issues need to be examined? There are not definitive answers to these questions, since answers emerge from the dialogue and the learning that this engenders in the participants. Systemic development is a process to allow for participation and self-organisation by the relevant people, rather than an attempt to fully define, measure and control the issues. However, it does require information and knowledge (including technical knowledge) to create an understanding of relevant issues as they emerge from the different perspectives of participants.

Figure 3: World Trade and Farming Systems

1. 1944: The Bretton Woods Conference is the popular name of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference that took place July 1-22, 1944, at Bretton Woods, a vacation resort in New Hampshire. The conference, attended by representatives of 44 nations, resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (The World Bank). One aim was to stimulate world trade.

2. 1947: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a treaty signed at the Geneva Trade Conference by representatives of 23 non-Communist nations. It led to the formation of an international forum dedicated to the expansion of multilateral trade and the conciliation and settlement of international trade disputes. Since it became effective in January 1948, the treaty has been accepted by an increasing number of nations. By 1988, 96 nations, representing a predominant share of world trade, adhered to GATT as full contracting parties; others participate under various arrangements, including de facto treaty acceptance. Although trade negotiations are ongoing in nature, since 1947 GATT members have sponsored eight specially organized rounds of negotiations. The eighth round of trade negotiations, the Uruguay Round, began in late 1986 and was expected to last four years, but in fact lasted eight. One result of this round was the formation of the WTO. A sub-group known as the Cairns group, made up of countries heavily reliant on agricultural trade, includes Australia.

3. 1994: The World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the Uruguay Round (1986-94). The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Attempts are currently being made by the Cairns group to convene a new round of trade negations.

4. Two important WTO agreements are firstly the TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, concerned with patents. The articles on trade and are reviewed every five years, and those for agriculture are under review.

5. The second is the Codex Alimentarius, the rules governing food standards.

1. 1972: UN Conference on the Environment, Stockholm. Here genetic resources were declared to be a part of the commons and available to all.
2. 1992: The ‘Earth Summit’ at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Officially the United Nations conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). This is repeated every five years, with the next meeting due this year. At least four streams of agreements from this can be identified as having importance for the future of farming systems:
3. The first was the Convention on climate change, the latest meeting in Kyoto giving rise amongst other things to the potential for ‘carbon sinks’, and the need to reduce or stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.
4. The second was the responsibility of FAO, to set up the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Amongst other things, this group is responsible for holding in trust the genetic resource of mankind, in gene banks and through seed conservation. This was a response to the loss of genetic diversity caused by the green revolution. However, funds were not allocated for re-planting and regeneration, only for deep-freezing of seeds. Because of funding shortfalls, there is now a proposal to only keep seeds with ‘desirable qualities’, but the legal status of CGIAR and these seeds has yet to be established. These resources are accessible to researchers and breeders, but not to the farmers and indigenous people who originally supplied the seeds! There is currently a lack of agreement as to how farmers can access these resources.
5. The third was the ‘Agenda 21’- the United Nations commission on Sustainable Development. This is better known, and meets every year.
6. Finally, there was the convention on Biological Diversity. A COPs, or Conference Of the Parties, also developed a Protocol on Biosafety, which is reviewed when the COPs meets every two years. At its Buenos Aires meeting COPs identified concerns relating to biodiversity and Biosafety issues in agriculture: The website www.biodiv.org gives updated information on this. At the Nairobi meeting in 2000, COPs decided to develop a protocol on access and benefits relating to biodiversity, including issues related to prior informed consent when collecting biological material, and mutually agreed terms associated with such collections, particularly aimed at protecting local knowledge and indigenous people.

In systemic thinking, emergence – surprise – can appear at any level of the system, and cannot be predicted from a knowledge of the parts; this is not possible in the scientific (experimental/reductionist) worldview, where all greater things derive from lesser things. However, an experimental scientific, disciplinary approach to improving the issues of concern may well be one of the ways selected to seek an improvement as a result of the dialogue, but any consequent improvements would be examined for potential interactive effects through further dialogue, through formal hard systems modelling (defining the system’s purpose from outside the system boundary, and using varying degrees of mathematical applications), and through careful monitoring and ongoing, participative revision during implementation. All the time, there is a continual focus on learning by all the stakeholders about the issues of concern and their improvement.

The word value has several meanings, but currently it has come to be dominated by its economic meaning of the quality of being most useful, giving rise to judgements of worth, a fair equivalent for something, or a thing’s (or person’s) usefulness or importance. However, this is only a part of the fuller meaning of value, which is better stated as a principle, standard or quality considered worthwhile or desirable. Here the usefulness of something is only one of many ways of making a value judgement. It is in this second, fuller sense that values, together with their associated beliefs, affect the learned behaviours that give rise to a particular community’s culture. Thus if only scientific or economic values are used to make judgements, they may not always find acceptance in many communities.

A participatory approach to the development of farming systems has embedded in it the values of sharing power and decision making across all stakeholders, and of respecting the views and knowledge of all stakeholders. This moves beyond the idea of making trade-offs between competing objectives, as is the case with the utilitarian approach of much of modern economic development, or of only accepting experimental science as the arbiter of what is right, as much of agricultural decision making does beyond the farm gate. A participatory stance is underpinned with a more rights-based (or deontological) approach that is incompatible with the utilitarian (or teleological) trade-off rationality. There are certain things particular communities will accept about how their food is produced, and certain things they will not freely accede to, as they contravene their values and belief systems. With participative approaches, it is the means that are important, allowing the ends to emerge from this application of a valued process. Such a process may well also embrace other values than the two already mentioned, including broad human values such as Love, Peace, Truth, Right Action and Non-Violence.

Changes, including new technologies, will not be incorporated into farming systems if they contravene the values held by those operating these farming systems, unless coercion, in one form or another is used. Midgley (2000) gives an example of how methods will fail if they come from a group holding a utilitarian or scientific set of (teleological) values, which they then try (often unwittingly) to impose on a community group holding rights-based (deontological) values: If the group insists on using its teleological values, it can then only succeed by domination of its views at the expense of respect for the values held by other stakeholders. An understanding of some of the philosophical issues involved is thus necessary for making an appropriate selection and introduction of a particular change or technology into a local context, as these will implicitly embody certain rationalities and values that will impinge on various stakeholders differently. A critical awareness needs to emerge through dialogue amongst these stakeholders, particularly about the values that must be upheld. It is also these values that will underpin their judgements about if and when an improvement has occurred in a particular context. This contrasts with approaches based on experimental science, where the desired outcome is often established before any intervention – participatory or otherwise – commences. What constitutes an improvement should be a topic for consideration and dialogue amongst the stakeholders of an issue (or context) throughout any intervention, with such dialogue allowing the values held by different groups to emerge and be recognised. This re-emergence of values is yet another factor that is also driving a paradigm shift in agriculture that will have important implications for farming systems over the next decade.

Agriculture until recently has been dominated by the paradigm of experimental science, also called reductionist science. Such a science is based on objectivity, seeking to predict through falsification, thereby facilitating control, with such scientific knowing locked into mathematics and numbers. The achievements of science using this approach are dazzling, and include the green revolution in agriculture, but these very achievements, as mentioned at the start of this paper, often blind us to what lies outside of this approach – what is ignored. This was eloquently captured in an Australian newspaper article (The Land, 2000). A woman farmer was describing how the outbreak of an infection of Ovine Johne’s Disease (OJD) on her farm had forced her to re-educate herself and take off-farm employment. The article says:

The issues she is pleading for fall outside traditional discipline-based science. Smith (1989) suggests that issues science does not address include:

• Intrinsic and Normative Values – science can tell you what people like about agro-environmental issues (descriptive), but not what they should like (normative);
• Purposes – the attribution of an intentional character to what happens in nature;
• Global and existential meanings – what is the meaning of it all? And what are the meanings of the problems of life?
• Quality – which is a subjective experience, so nothing can convey the nature of a quality to anyone who cannot perceive it directly.

To achieve this, Smith (1989) further suggests that an innovative worldview needs to incorporate alternative and opposite guidelines that move the current scientific worldview from a focus on:

• Objectivity, prediction, control and numbers,

To also include:

• Subjectivity, surprise, surrender and words.

Incorporating subjectivity would recognise that it is as important to understand oneself, as it is to understand one’s world and its parts. Incorporating surprise remembers that in comparison to what we do not know, what we do know is very small: This is illustrated by a story Smith (1989) tells of the director of a medical research team, who noted that after thirty years of research, when he cut his face shaving he still had no idea about what made it heal. The incorporation of surrender would give recognition to the fact that one does not enter a friendship or marriage with an intention to control; surrender is to be able to give oneself to a person, a cause or the call of conscience. Finally there is the inclusion of words, where words are symbols, while numbers are only signs: Signs are fine for ascending logic, but the ambiguity of words is required for meaning to emerge, as in language, which is biological in that humans are programmed to learn it.

Such an approach would move very much in the direction asked for by the woman farmer in the illustration above. Such an approach would represent a paradigm shift in the worldview of agriculture, and how research, extension and education activities are carried out to learn about and improve farming systems over the next decade. It is very much a shift to a participative and holistic (systemic) worldview, governed by a value of The common good, as described by Bawden (1999). Other worldviews he describes to make this point are illustrated in figure 5.

An example of how worldviews will influence farming systems in the next decade can be drawn from the way risks are judged in the field of transboundary transfer (between widely different organisms), handling and use of organisms modified by genetic engineering. There is a debate between using the Precautionary Principle (supported by developing countries and European industrialised countries) instead of the Principle of Familiarity (the framework supported by the USA, Australia and Japan). The Principle of Familiarity assigns science the role of providing risk assessment on the intended novel traits of a given genetically modified organism; however as far as unintended changes of such organisms are concerned, science has to provide arguments to support the judgement that there are significant differences in the composition of genetically engineered and non-engineered organisms before further risk assessment has to occur. The Precautionary Principle brings science and ethics together, stating that when an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically – precaution in the face of scientific uncertainty, and placing the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on victims or potential victims of the activity. This, however, would slow down the introduction of GM crops, and increase the cost of their development. This issue is exacerbated by the creep of corporate control over university and other research organisations, and the rights of researchers to publish results, meaning that it is hard to get science to look at unintended consequences, and when this does occur, results may be withheld and whistleblowers victimised (Editorial, 2001; Pusztai, 2001). The Principle of Familiarity comes from a reductionist science worldview and a utilitarian value base. The precautionary principle is not at odds with reductionist science, in fact it supports it, but its worldview come from a more communal approach, valuing the common good at the expense of private gain.

Figure 5: Four Worldviews           (After Bawden, 1999)

Learning and the educator’s role

All that has been said so far has a clear focus on learning, and this leads to another innovation required to improve farming systems – a move away from a focus on teaching about them and how to improve them, to learning with stakeholders about these farming systems and how to improve them. By this I mean a move away from a belief that knowledge can be "injected’ into others in some way, and that knowledge by itself can lead to understanding and thus improvement. There is a need to recognise and acknowledge the vital learning link between finding out about farming systems’ issues, and taking action to improve these issues in some way. The finding out and taking action need to go on in the actual (experiential) context that is giving rise to the issues of agro-environmental concern, and not be confined to simulations and experiments within the confines of the research laboratory, research station or classroom. As far as possible, the learning and research needs to be issue-based in actual agricultural contexts, and it is from this basis that other issues of a more discipline-of-science kind can be addressed. The actual contexts are always complex and messy to deal with (not neat like the adapted questions that experimental science addresses), and it is here that participative and systemic ideas come to the fore.

Experiential learning has been described elsewhere (e.g. Kolb, 1984; Packham, Roberts and Bawden, 1989; Bawden, 1995), but the basis of such learning is that it is made up of four sets of questions:

• What is there?
• What does it mean?
• What might be done?
• How will we do it? How will we know when we have done it?

Thus while incorporating theory and practice, experiential learning is more than either or both of these – experiential learning is not just learning in a practical situation. The learner needs first to address these questions about the issue(s) of concern; but secondly the learner needs to also examine the methods chosen to answer these initial questions; and then thirdly to question the assumptions held in deciding on the selection of the methods used to answer those questions - the assumptions that help to make meaning and that give rise to the values we hold, underpinned by different epistemologies and worldviews (Bawden and Packham, 1993). Thus there are three levels of learning going on in experiential learning, learning, meta-learning and epistemic learning.

This linking of theory with practice and values in a recursive way is termed praxis. The key to this educative innovation is that praxis is grounded in real contextual issues as the main focus and thrust of learning. As a result, the role of the researcher or educator becomes much more that of a facilitator of learning, rather than simply an expert disseminator of knowledge. This requires different inter-personal and communication skills, from the researcher, the educator, and the stakeholders. Again such issues have been described elsewhere (e.g. Packham et al, 1989; Bawden, 1992; Bawden and Packham, 1993). The "teaching" becomes much more learner-centred and self-directed, rather than teacher-directed.

Others support these ideas, particularly in the context of developing a more sustainable agriculture. For example, Pretty (1998) believes that the central concept of sustainable agriculture is that it must enshrine new ways of learning about the world, and that such learning must not be confused with teaching. He notes that teaching implies a transfer of knowledge and understanding from someone who knows to someone who does not know. Ison (1990) also pointed out that where teaching does not include a focus on self-development to enhance the ability to learn, then teaching threatens sustainable agriculture. Both note that this has profound implications for agricultural development, and thus for farming systems over the next decade. The focus becomes less on what we learn and more on how we learn and with whom – with a much greater focus on participation than is necessary with teaching. Pretty (1998) suggests that this implies new roles for development professionals, leading to a whole new professionalism with new concepts, values, methods and behaviour, characteristics that are describe more fully in figure 6.

Figure 6: Towards a new professionalism for sustainable agriculture   Source: Pretty (1995b) adapted from Pretty and Chambers (1993)

Elements                                                               Components of the new professionalism         

Assumptions about reality     The assumption is that realities are socially constructed, 
                              and so participatory methodologies are required to relate 
                              these many and varied perspectives one to another.

Underlying values             Underlying values are not presupposed, but are made explicit; 
                              old dichotomies of facts and values, and knowledge and 
                              ignorance, are transcended. 

Scientific                    The many scientific methods are accepted as complementary; 
                              with reductionist science for well-defined problems and when 
                              system uncertainties are low; and holistic and constructivist 
                              science when problem situations are complex and uncertain. 

Who sets priorities and       A wide range of stakeholders and professionals set priorities together;
whose criteria count?         local people's criteria and perceptions are emphasised.

Context of researching        Investigators accept that they do not know where research will lead;
process                       it has to be an open-ended learning process; historical and spatial
                              context of inquiry is fundamentally important.

Relationship between actors   Professionals shift from controlling to enabling mode; they attempt
and groups in the process     to build trust through joint analyses and negotiation; understanding
                              arises through this interaction, resulting in deeper relationships 
                              between investigator(s), the ‘objects’ of research, and the wider 
                              communities of interest.

Mode of professional          More multidisciplinary than single disciplinary when problems difficult 
working                       to define; so attention is needed on the interactions between members 
                              of groups working together.

Institutional involvement     No longer just scientific or higher-level institutions involved; 
                              process inevitably comprises a broad range of societal and cultural 
                              institutions and movements at all levels. 

Quality assurance             There are no simple, objective criteria for quality assurance: criteria 
and evaluation                for trustworthiness replace internal validity, external validity, 
                              objectivity, and reliability when methods are non-reductionist; evaluation 
                              is no longer by professionals or scientists alone, but by a wide range of 
                              affected and interested parties (the extended peer community).

It should be stressed again here that participatory approaches are also learning approaches, and Pretty goes on to suggest six common features of learning approaches to participatory development, similar to the ideas I have already presented. These are:

• A defined methodology (principles for action) and a systemic learning process
• Multiple perspectives – a central objective to seek diversity, rather than characterise complexity in terms of average values.

• Group learning processes that involve the recognition that the complexity of the world will only be revealed through group inquiry and interaction
• Context specific
• Facilitating experts and stakeholders. The role of the ‘expert’ is best thought of as helping people in their situation carry out their own study and to achieve something
• Leading to sustained action – the learning process leads to debate about change, and debate changes the perceptions of the actors and their readiness to contemplate action (praxis).

In this regard, while noting the long history of participation in agricultural development, he suggests that two overlapping schools of thought and practice have evolved. One views participation as a means to increase efficiency – what I have said is a utilitarian values approach - with the central notion that when people are involved, they are more likely to agree with and support the new development or service. The other view sees participation as a fundamental right – what I have said is a deontological values approach - in which the main aim is to initiate mobilization for collective action, empowerment and institution building (see section on values above). In an analysis somewhat similar to that of Arnstein (1969), Pretty (1998) notes that participation has been used to justify the extension of, and control by, the state as well as to build local capacity and self-reliance; it has been used to justify external decisions, as well as to devolve power and decision making away from external agencies; and that it has been used for data collection, as well as for interactive analysis. He resolves the way organisations interpret and use the term participation into seven clear types. For him, they range from manipulation and passive participation, where people are told what is to happen and act out of predetermined roles, to self-mobilization, where people take initiatives largely independent of external institutions. These are shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: A typology of participation: how people participate in development programmes and projects (Pretty, 1995a)

    Typology          Characteristics of Each Type     

1   Manipulative      Participation is simply a pretence, with ‘people's' representatives 
    Participation     on official boards but who are unelected and have no power.

2   Passive           People participate by being told what has been decided or has already 
    Participation     happened. It involves unilateral announcements by an administration or
                      project management without any listening to people's responses. 
                      The information being shared belongs only to external professionals.

3   Participation     People participate by being consulted or by answering questions. 
    by Consultation   External agents define problems and information gathering processes,
                      and so control analysis. Such a consultative process does not concede 
                      any share in decision-making, and professionals are under no obligation
                      to take on board people's views.

4  Participation      People participate by contributing resources, for example labour, in return 
   for Material       for food, cash or other material incentives. Farmers may provide the fields 
   Incentives         and labour, but are involved in neither experimentation nor the process of 
                      for food, cash or other material incentives. Farmers may provide the fields 
                      learning. It is very common to see this called participation, yet people have
                      no stake in prolonging technologies or practices when the incentives end.

5  Functional         Participation seen by external agencies as a means to achieve project goals, 
   Participation      especially reduced costs. People may participate by forming groups to meet 
                      predetermined objectives related to the project. Such involvement may be
                      interactive and involve shared decision making, but tends to arise only after
                      major decisions have already been made by external agents. At worst, local people
                      may still only be coopted to serve external goals.

6  Interactive        People participate in joint analysis, development of action plans and formation 
   Participation      or strengthening of local institutions. Participation is seen as a right, not 
                      just the means to achieve project goals. The process involves interdisciplinary
                      methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systemic and
                      structured learning processes. As groups take control over local decisions and
                      determine how available resources are used, so they have a stake in maintaining
                      structures or practices.

7  Self-              People participate by taking initiatives independently of external institutions 
   Mobilization       to change systems. They develop contacts with external institutions for resources
                      and technical advice they need, but retain control over how resources are used. 
                      Self-mobilization can spread if governments and NGOs provide an enabling framework
                      of support. Such self-initiated mobilization may or may not challenge existing 
                      distributions of wealth and power.

In Pretty’s view, this typology suggests that the term participation should not be accepted without appropriate clarification. Pretty supports this by drawing on a review of 121 rural water supply projects in 49 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America conducted by Narayan (1993), who found that it was when people were involved in decision-making during all stages of the project from design to maintenance that the best results occurred. If they were just involved in information sharing and consultations, then results were much poorer. According to these results, it was clear that moving down Pretty’s typology moved a project from a medium to highly effective category. Clearly these ideas need to be taken into account when improving farming systems everywhere.

Let me conclude with some comments about the question of genetic engineering that I raised at the start of my paper. The issue can be divided between those arguments associated with its scientific basis, and those to do with its role in making profits for multi-national corporations that dominate world trade. Let me deal with the scientific issues first. Here we see a clash between ‘old’ ideas, the concepts I was taught at high school and university in the 1960’s, and the new reality of scientific findings in the field of genetics. These have been summarised by Ho (1998), and are presented in figures 8 and 9.

Figure 8: Mindset versus reality of genetic engineering       From Ho (1998)

Genetic engineering mindset                  Reality of scientific findings
     (Old concepts)                                (Current concepts)
                                                                           
Genes determine characteristics            Genes function in a complex network;
in linear causal chains; one gene          causation is multi-dimensional, non-linear,
gives one function                         and circular

Genes and genomes are not                  Genes and genomes are subject
subject to environmental influence.        to feedback regulation.

Genes and genomes are stable               Genes and genomes are dynamic
and unchanging.                            and fluid, can change directly in
                                           response to the environment, and
                                           give ‘adaptive’ mutations to order.

Genes stay where they are put.             Genes can jump horizontally
                                           between unrelated species and recombine.

Some of the potential hazards that therefore might occur as a result of genetically engineering organisms, include the generation of new cross-species viruses that cause disease; the generation of new bacteria that cause diseases; spreading drug and antibiotic resistant genes among the viral and bacterial pathogens, making infections untreatable; random insertion into genomes of cells potentially resulting in harmful effects such as cancer; reactivation of dormant viruses present in all cells and genomes, which may cause diseases; spreading new genes and gene constructs that have never existed; and the multiplication of ecological impacts due to all of the above (Ho, 1998). Transgenic crops are unstable, and the performance of GM crops in the field is very erratic; new generations may be different from the original line. What is required is detailed molecular identification of where the new gene is after transfer, and of its stability for at least five generations, but this is not currently done. Thus it would seem that the precautionary Principle should apply, and genetic engineering should be confined to the role of a research tool under carefully controlled conditions and safeguards, as an aid to understanding.

Figure 9: The old and new genetics        From Ho (1998)

So why is Genetic engineering pushed so much? It is the issue of trade and profit. The global agreements talked about earlier in this paper allow genetically engineered organisms to be patented, and seeds cannot be retained by farmers, but have to be purchased new each time; potentially a very profitable approach for companies with the resources to develop new GE crops, and to protect their patents. Indeed there is a well-known instance of a farmer in Canada being sued by a multi-national company for having unlicensed canola seed growing in his fields, despite the fact that the seeds were the result of wind pollination from a neighbour! We have seen earlier that genetically engineered crops are not needed to ‘feed the world’, and there is ample evidence that consumers do not want to purchase the products of genetically engineered organisms: when genetically engineered soybeans were first grown in the USA and Argentina, there was not enough seed to supply the Brazilian requirements for this seed as well, so they grew un-engineered varieties. When the crops were put on the world markets, the Brazilian seed fetched a far superior price; this was a fortunate unplanned event. It is this adverse consumer reaction that drives many of the international negotiations to prevent labelling of GMOs, as supposed ‘trade barriers’. However, recent evidence is suggesting that the message is starting to get through, and the large agricultural companies are de-emphasising the role of genetically engineered crops, due to falling profits. Instead, they are splitting off subsidiaries so they can focus their genetic engineering on human health approaches.

This story links many of the issues I have raised in this paper. It also shows the value of agriculture and considerations of the future of farming systems for education in general as well as for agricultural education itself. The ideas of this paper demonstrate how agriculture can be a key domain for education for a range of critical issues that citizens need to be aware of and that all have experience of – after all we all need to eat.

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