Systems thinking, interdisciplinarity and farmer participation: essential ingredients in working for more sustainable organic farming systems

Summary

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. This paper discusses the principles and values behind some of the innovative agricultural research methods which have evolved over the past 30 years in many countries and suggests that the lessons from this experience could have significant benefits in the development of organic research in the UK. The author argues that the key elements which need to be incorporated into a new approach to research on organic systems are:- systemic thinking (the need for a more holistic understanding of the context of farming and rural livelihoods), interdisciplinarity, (contributions from both social and natural science in the research process) and farmer-participation (the active participation and partnership of farmers and other key stakeholders in the process of design, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating research). By incorporating these principles, both into the vision of what research can become within in the organic movement, and into the methodologies that are used in new research partnerships, it is suggested that we could learn our way towards more sustainable, organically-based rural livelihoods in the future.