Building narratives of farmers’ experiencing agroecological transition and peer group support

Summary

Agroecology transforms not only the farmers' agroecosystem but also their work situations and the way of being of a farmer. To support successful agroecological transitions, it is important to understanding the farmers' motivation and resources needed by farmers. In our work, we adopt a comprehensive perspective, to explore what farmers have lived, experienced and tried. Based on the pragmatist theory, we describe how farmers, embedded in their work environment, transform their experiences and how the forms of support they may receive from their peers can take place. To make peer support intelligible, we use the building of farmers' narratives of their experiences as a tool to organize data in coherence with the diverse work dimensions experienced by farmers. We thus illustrate with an example the recreation of the experience of a farmer who is developing a new livestock activity and also wants to convert to organic farming. Through the narratives, we can capture the relations that farmers build with their environment and the scaffolding role played by peers to support a farmer's inquiry when they face an indeterminate situation This study invites us to look at the potential for learning and transforming farmers' experience by considering the support of inquiry as a driver of the transformation of the work situation. It is an interesting avenue of work to be explored for thinking a renewed training strategies and rural advisory.