Farm management, knowledge and multidimensional farming - some reflections from the perspective of farm enterprises as heterogeneous self-organising systems

Summary

The history of modernisation of agriculture is the story of specialisation into a one-dimensional food production, and in recent decades there has been a strong specialisation into one-commodity farms. Changing conditions in terms of technical features and market are commonly seen as the major rationale and driving force of this specialisation. However, the growing amount of knowledge and how this knowledge is produced and circulated may be an even stronger factor of explanation of this development and thereby a key to understand the challenges and barriers of the development of multidimensional farming.
Based on empirical investigations and theoretical reflections I will discuss the barriers and potentials for management of multidimensional farming, from the perspective of the farm. The discussion will follow two lines of argumentation. 1) A historical look at production and reproduction of knowledge and skills involved in agricultural production: Describing the move from farming based on local, intrinsic reproduced knowledge and skills, and further to one-dimensional farming based on scientific acontextual knowledge and manuals, and towards multidimensional farming based on contextual knowledge and skills. And here, I will argue, agricultural science has played a central role in the development process towards one-dimensional farming. 2) An analysis and discussion of the complexity of multidimensional farming from the perspective of a farm enterprise, viewed as a heterogeneous self-organising system. The key question is: how can the farmer/farm enterprise mobilise and reproduce the necessary knowledge and skills (e.g. in terms of labour and consultants) into the management process of the multidimensional agriculture without losing the internal coherence and strategy of the enterprise?