Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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data collection and analysis, we may be missing a great deal of relevant
information with this approach. This goes back to the broader debate: what
is “objective” research? Some people argue that we must use these little
checked boxes so as to treat each farmer uniformly and to request the exact
same information from each. The problem is that we may miss a great deal
of relevant information this way. One farmer may check yes because she
fully agrees with the question, while another farmer is confused and feels
the question doesn't really fit what is occurring on his farm, but that a yes is
still more appropriate than a no (even though there are a lot of unexplained
issues behind that yes checkmark). In this case, a researcher obtains two yes
checkmarks but under completely different circumstances that are never
addressed in the study.
So, then, what is an objective survey? If we allow the farmer to “fill-
in-the-blank” for open-ended questions, does that provide more realistic
responses while also keeping uniformity by asking all respondents the same
questions? Yes, perhaps. Yet we must wonder - are we really asking the right
questions? The questionnaire may be way off the mark and skip an idea that
is fundamentally important to a farmer, simply because we didn't know
enough to include it among our questions. Maybe the remedy for this is
to read all the past studies and base the questions on information gleaned
from previous research. Ah, but what if there is something new that was not
considered in other research but that truly influences the farmers you are
now studying? So this debate continues. You probably know which side I
am on. I think we miss a lot of important information when we strive for
“objectivity.” Instead we should talk to farmers and see what we can learn in
open-ended conversations about their farms. This is a pragmatic approach
that strives to understand the world through people's actual experience.
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omparing Organic and Conventional Farmers
Many researchers who want to study organic farmers actually undertake
studies that compare organic to conventional farmers. This is a bit silly,
really, as if one would say, “Hey, I want to learn about apples, so I'm going to
study oranges
and
apples!” But the comparative nature of our work is due
to the fact that there has been so much previous research on conventional
farming that it serves as a baseline for comparison: Hey, let's see how differ-
ent organic farmers are from the “norm.” And this is useful in providing a
context for organic farming and to illustrate what is unique about organic
farmers and their field methods. And, yes, there are substantial differences
between the two groups of farmers.
