The Transformation to Organic: Insights from Practice Theory - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 187

(Reckwitz 2003). It means learning new techniques, experimenting, contracting new
relations and memberships, reading different journals, and leaning a “new language”.
Because the transformation process affects all family members, the practice of converting to
organic always creates family discussions. Most previous assumptions about labor, income,
and decisions are “up for discussion.” All these changes in orders of knowledge, power,
rules and resources arise independent of the individual per se, but are phenomena of social
practices that are integral to the transformation process.
The adoption of new practices also confronts the converting farmer with the need to
reorganize or establish a new social network. Advisors, farmers, consumers, and
institutions, the farmer has never seen before, become now of relevance (Brunori et al. 2011).
With this changing and embodying of unknown materiality, things and artifacts, and social
relations, inherent in practices, the farmer discovers and creates new meaning for a new
farming and everyday lifestyle. By excluding the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides and
fertilizers, the farmer has to find new strategies for managing soil fertility and pests. Instead
of turning to chemical products the transitioning organic farmer learns ways for managing
cropping systems, soil tillage and robust varieties as part of a range of pest management
strategies that must be re-defined every season. More specifically, when re-establishing
biotopes around a field to foster beneficial insects, the farmer must reflect on the spatial
dimensions of the field, study the living conditions of predators and to identify and
establish a structural quality through which the biotope helps to fulfill the demands of
various living conditions.
Non-organic and organic provide subject orders or subject cultures which are contradictory
and contested (cf. Reckwitz 2008a, 80). Reckwitz underlines the strength of related cultural
codes in the formation of subject forms, and the challenge to change them. Schatzki in
contrast interprets stability and change dependent upon the agency of components which
are configured in the arrangements, specifically that of humans (Jonas 2009, 17). Specifically
in the transformation period, we argue that the capacity of individuals is more challenging
than in routine situations. In part, this helps us understand the limited availability of
practice-discourses on organic farming specifically at the beginning of the transformation
period.
5. Concluding observations
In this chapter, we have applied practice theory as an analytic approach to help understand
organic transformation as a continuing and evolving practice in which each farmer creates a
new understanding and embodiment of farming materiality - soil, plants and animals - and
that generates new habits and social relationships. We have also introduced the importance
of understanding organic transformation as a process that is accompanied by structural
changes, new orders, rules, norms and resources and new ways for the farmer to assume,
restructure, but also contribute to the orders of knowledge in this type of agriculture. We
have sought to identify the ways in which we might continue to draw upon practice theory
to identify and generate new insights into this transformation process. Cognisant of space
limitations, this paper has focused on selected aspects in the plant production sector
studying an industrialized non-organic farm with a more typical organic farm. Clearly, this
could be elaborated and extended to animal and poultry or vegetable production and
others.