The Transformation to Organic: Insights from Practice Theory - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 186

Type of change
/ practices

To exclude, to avoid Facultative but

system relevant

To adopt (modify,
reduce..)..to innovate

Crop rotation

Mono-cropping Minimum of 20%

fodder legumes

New crops, crop
rotation, green
manure crops,
legumes

Fertilization Mineral fertilizer Organic fertilizer

management

Selected and reduced
amounts of mineral
fertilizers

Weed control Herbicides Compost

management (high
temperatures to
eliminate seeds)

Soil tillage,
mechanical weed
control, crop rotation

Pest control Majority of non-

organic pesticides

Biotopes: edges and
herb-grass stripes

Soil tillage, crop
rotation

Varieties Seed with pesticides,

GMO

Organic seed
treatment, organic
varieties

new seed sources and
varieties

Tillage Deep plowing New machines Tillage depth

modification, time
periods of tillage,
tillage intensity

Table 4. Quo Vadis? -Commitment of Change in plant production

Similarly, when approaching crop fertilization, the farmer must start by organizing a two-
year crop rotation of nitrogen-fixing legumes. Instead of relying on a commercial product,
the farmer accomplishes fertilization through the use of legumes and the creation of
biomass. For the converter, this clearly represents a new practice and a fundamentally
different way of thinking about and practicing fertilization. In short, crop fertilization
becomes what Schatzki (2010) defines as a new practice-arrangement nexus 11 . The farmer
must think and act differently about what was done as a non-organic farmer.
The material configuration of plant protection in organic as well, must be conceived in
relation to soil fertility management, specific crop rotations, organic manure sprayed a
certain times of the year and a specific structure of biotopes. As Schatzki (2010, 130) notes in
another context, we could argue that the material configuration of organic farming takes
place on the farm and in the field.
The transformation is also accompanied by tremendous changes in thinking about the
farming practice. A new awareness of nature emerges, as well as new understandings of
responsibilities to family, neighbors and friends. To change the system means to test, to play
with new options, to leave behind routines, and to lose the stability offered by former
practices (Giddens 1992, in Reichardt 2007, 59). It means being able to accept the
confrontation with new heterogeneous and diverging forms of practical knowledge
11 Practice-arrangement nexuses (linkages), according to Schatzki (2010) are social sites, which contain
practices and arrangements. These practices and arrangements connect into wider nets of nexuses, in
this case such as the organic community, extension services, government and financial networks, these
can in turn create even wider webs of nexuses.