@inproceedings{DoeringViewegerKlingetal.2021, author = {D{\"o}ring, Thomas Felix and Vieweger, Anja and Kling, Charlotte and Bruckner, August and Stumm, Christoph and Bloch, Ralf}, title = {The three freedoms required by transformative agricultural research}, series = {Landscape 2021 Diversity for sustainable and resilient agriculture, Online conference, 20.-22.09.2021}, booktitle = {Landscape 2021 Diversity for sustainable and resilient agriculture, Online conference, 20.-22.09.2021}, editor = {Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF),}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-7680}, pages = {48}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Societies' calls for addressing the urgent problems of climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental crises are becoming ever louder. Responding to this, and to the growing severity of global threats to agricultural and food systems, national and international research funders are increasingly demanding that funded projects achieve real-world transformation of farming systems towards true sustainability and resilience. This development is not only a new funding opportunity for researchers. Because separating the roles of knowledge generation and knowledge exchange with practice will often fail to achieve the necessary transformation, (at least some) researchers will need to engage in this transdisciplinary process of transformative agricultural research. As a consequence, the roles of these researchers need to shift towards stronger integration in farming practice, and deeper exchange with practitioners, adding a new key role to teaching and research. We argue that meeting the goals of the mission of transformative research in agriculture requires three essential freedoms. First, researchers need to be free to engage in this transformative research. This entails a freed mindset, which enables researchers to leave behind traditional roles, e.g. for true knowledge exchange, co-design of projects, and learning from farmers. In addition, there needs to be a stronger appreciation for transdisciplinary and transformative research in the research community, accompanied by a reduced pressure to perform in other currently dominating assessment categories. Second, farmers need to be free to engage in this process as well. Again, this requires an open mindset, e.g. to engage in, and learn from collaborative research, but also available funds and time to engage in the process. Third, transformative agricultural research needs freedom in the project structure and in administrative rules. This includes the permission to fail and to tolerate errors, so that the people involved in the process are able to learn from mistakes. In addition, this is required so that projects are not set up to avoid risks, and can really be transformative and contain innovative elements. Finally, funders will need to show trust in the parties and to reduce administrative burden. Within this framework we discuss the success factors and limitations of transformative agricultural research using examples from various recent national and international projects.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{ViewegerDoeringBlochetal.2021, author = {Vieweger, Anja and D{\"o}ring, Thomas Felix and Bloch, Ralf and Bachinger, Johann}, title = {Inspiring change in agricultural practices}, series = {Landscape 2021 Diversity for sustainable and resilient agriculture, Online conference, 20.-22.09.2021}, booktitle = {Landscape 2021 Diversity for sustainable and resilient agriculture, Online conference, 20.-22.09.2021}, editor = {Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF),}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-7700}, pages = {50}, year = {2021}, abstract = {An international group of 15 organic and biodynamic farmers have collaborated since early 2015 to develop their own strategies and learning concepts to increase health on their farms. After jointly formulating ten core statements as their own practical principles for managing healthy farming systems, they went on to develop a training strategy to transfer this knowledge about promoting health on organic farms, describing a co-learning concept to collaborate with their peers in a long-term process. Most suitable, appropriate methods and optimal conditions were discussed for successfully spreading such complex tacit knowledge among other farmers, and crucially, for invoking change in behavior. One core concept emerged as being most critical for success - inspiration. It was the group members' or peers' ability to inspire, which, in their experience, was key to stimulate their own change of practices, motivate trials with new methods, or adopt a new perspective or philosophy for managing their farm. They described that it was not only the reading about different techniques, or seeing new machinery in action during a farmer field day - the actual spark that triggered their own action was in most cases personal interaction. The personal exchange and inspiration among peers, who have established a sound level of trust, who share their experiences, as well as passions and failures seemed to be most likely the key element of farmer learning. This was particularly true for learning and enhancing soft skills, such as intuition, gut-feeling or self-reflection - all essential skills for running healthy organic farms according to the farmer group. The farmers of this project series have attributed great value to learning with and from each other during a co-learning process, in particular when the group is regularly stimulated by and collaborating with interdisciplinary researchers who are embedded in this co-learning process. We could therefore conclude that not only participatory-/action research or multi-actor approaches, but agricultural research in general benefits from a deep connection and understanding between researchers and farmers, to successfully inspire change in practices, and the adoption of new philosophies and perspectives that trigger long lasting transformation.}, language = {en} }