Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ing about new practices, and take some additional risks, because they
believe they can improve their farming system. They want to make their
farming system more environmentally friendly, and be able at least to
break even over time, knowing that it will be perhaps less predictable.
Many of them have taken some significant risks to innovate, and some
became “leading growers” in partnerships.
Networking Entrepreneurs are oriented toward off-farm activities,
especially those that allow them to learn about new techniques and tech-
nologies. Some of these activities were explicitly knowledge-oriented,
such as work as a pest-control advisor or directing a local Farm Bureau.
These off-farm activities expose them to information and technologies
that Networking Entrepreneurs highly value. Farming is woven in with
these activities, and they understand themselves to be better growers as
a result. This group is highly attuned to watching other growers and how
others perceive their own farming operation.
Production Maximizers see farming as a business, and they focus on
producing the highest possible yield and quality. They focus on produc-
tion and profitability, and eschew the distraction of off-farm activities.
They express a competitive orientation, and a concern for the appear-
ance of their farming operation. Some Production Maximizers portray
farming as an industrial activity that, according to one respondent, was
like “dueling with Mother Nature.” They take a highly utilitarian view
of natural resources, and regard farming as not harming the environ-
ment, but merely changing it.
By focusing on farm-management style, Brodt and her colleagues
demonstrated that these three types of growers select different clusters
of biologically based practices for different reasons, in contrast to the
uniform and unidirectional assumptions of the transfer of technology
and adoption/diffusion approaches. They suggest that while scientists
and policy makers might wish every grower adopt an entire menu
of practices, in reality a more effective extension strategy would batch
practices into groups that correspond with different farm-management
styles. That Environmental Stewards such as Glenn Anderson would be
attracted to partnerships is unremarkable. The real significance of this
study is their explanation of why other growers found agroecological
partnerships attractive. More than 25 percent of Production Maximizers
and 40 percent of Networking Entrepreneurs in the Brodt study partici-
pated in partnerships.
