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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 49(10)

Cultural dimensions of a large-scale mixed-farming program: competing narratives of stakeholder actors

L. Rickards A C and R. J. Price B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Associate Partner, RMCG Consulting, Suite 1, Level 1, 357 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Vic. 3124, Australia.

B Grain & Graze National Coordinator, Kiri-ganai Research, GPO Box 103, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

C Corresponding author. Email: laurenr@rmcg.com.au

Animal Production Science 49(10) 956-965 https://doi.org/10.1071/EA08302
Submitted: 15 December 2008  Accepted: 5 June 2009   Published: 16 September 2009

Abstract

Grain & Graze was an innovative, multi-scale, multi-organisational, inter-disciplinary and triple bottom line research, development and extension (RD&E) program conducted to investigate and improve mixed-farming systems in Australia from 2003 to 2008. This paper reports on a sociological evaluation of the program’s institutional arrangements that was undertaken as one of a small number of social research projects within the program. Based on discourse analysis and investigation of participant experiences, it found the program was characterised by two competing views of what the program was or ought to be. Weaving across the program’s formal and informal elements and national and regional scales of management, these ‘narratives’ reflect the program’s coexisting ‘revolutionary’ aspirations and ‘organisational’ aspirations. Attention to the coexistence of these narratives and the way they were expressed within the program provides insight into the values, complexity and challenges of agricultural RD&E programs. It points to the significance the broader philosophical and governance context has for contemporary agricultural RD&E programs and other public science and sustainable development initiatives.


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1 Mixed farmers were defined as those farmers who grew crops together producing beef, wool or sheep-meat (Grain & Graze 2003).

2 In a sense, Mode 2 science is not new but represents a partial return to the lay roots of science, before it was institutionalised within universities and other organisations that worked to isolate and professionalise its practices, and protect its status as a privileged form of knowledge (Gieryn 1983, 1999; Barton 2003).

3 ‘Communities of practice’ are loose groups of people brought together by a shared interest in, and often passion for, a particular topic. The ‘community’ they form is informal and non-hierarchical in structure, crossing traditional organisational and disciplinary boundaries to provide a forum for the open-ended cross-fertilisation of ideas. Driven by the voluntary commitment of their members and not restricted to predetermined outcomes, communities of practice are often highly productive centres of innovation and learning (Wenger 2000; Wenger and Snyder 2000).