English In this blog, the LWA Accredited Training Coordinator Nikki Yoxall reflects on the history of eduction and why we need a new approach to delivering training in agroecological practices.
When considering how we change culture and the role of knowledge and skills in that change to move towards an agroecological future, I immediately looked to education and the role it plays.
I want to share a brief history of education, to help set the scene of why I think there are so many challenges now in developing agricultural education programmes that equip the next generation with the knowledge, skills and mindset needed when thinking of our food production systems as ecosystems, which is ultimately the basis of agroecology.
The Industrial Revolution brought several important changes to the field of education, importantly making education accessible for children of all socioeconomic backgrounds and setting laws making education a requirement – establishing education as a right not a privilege. There is no question that this was excellent.
The development of a national curriculum meant that every student across the country was learning the same thing at roughly the same age, and this meant that every employer had access to a consistent batch of equally qualified potential employees to fit into their production focused business model wherever they were located and if people moved around the country, which was on the increase as a result of industrialisation, there was no disparity in what they knew or had learned.
As the late Sir Ken Robinson identified, that led to us even now treating education as a factory production system, with batches of pupils and students collated by date of manufacture, with outputs that serve the needs of a post-industrial economy that is focused on growth, yield and productivity.
There are a growing number of researchers, farmers, growers and people who eat who see the future of food and farming being agroecological. The skills and mindset required to shift business as usual towards this path are not reflected in current agricultural education, which is still based on a post-industrial paradigm in terms of design and is usually informed through the development stages by stakeholders and educators stuck in conventional patterns, heavily reliant on inputs and fossil fuels. The chemical prescription approach teaches our students to address symptoms, not the root cause. We have ag and hort students who know more about sheds than soil, more about business planning than biology and more about machinery than ecological functioning. That isn’t to say these aren’t important – but they require context and consideration within the wider agro-ecosystem.
What we now require is a shift in education, one that guides and promotes new ways of working, that is built around social learning opportunities, that delivers at its heart regenerative principles not extractive practices. Whilst it is possible to enrol on a course with the Biodynamic college, or become Holistic Management certified, these programmes tend to be ideal for those already on the path, who have recognised that the standard way isn’t the only way.
Students engaging in agroecological education deserve to experience what it is to be part of a growing ecology, understanding their place as part of a community and developing confidence in taking principles and associated practices and applying them to their own unique contexts. As educators and farmers we have a responsibility to promote and facilitate critical thinking, knowledge synthesis and action research. Planning, doing, studying, adjusting, reflecting, planning again…. Teaching agroecology doesn’t just require new knowledge, it requires a new educational paradigm and new ways of thinking.
I currently wear a number of hats – educator, coordinator, leader, curriculum developer, farmer and facilitator, mostly directly linked to agroecology and regenerative farming. Those of us working, learning and creating in this space, recognise the value and power of community.
As a farmer, the most powerful learning experiences I have involve speaking to my peers, friends and colleagues – hearing about what works for them, visiting their farms, getting my hands dirty in fields and, as I found in the last fortnight, putting my nose deep in a handful of someone else’s soil and taking a deep breath! Asking questions, synthesising their knowledge with my own and tweaking, adapting and reviewing as necessary. When we can again, getting out on to farms, seeing what folk are doing and asking questions, testing this out on a small scale back at home are all so important in building our agroecological toolkit.
Social media, Twitter in particular has played a key role for me in learning how others are applying regen principles to their own practice and active Whatsapp groups take this even further. I am a member of a grazing discussion group and have participated in government funded and Soil Association facilitated field labs and RISS groups. This is not one size fits all advice, there are no prescriptions here, instead the experience and knowledge of group members is celebrated, teased out and shared. There is no such thing as a stupid question.
In my work with the PFLA, we are working with research institutes and farmers, in collaboration to develop the science that underpins or explains what we see on farm. In addition the network of members groups ably overseen by Charlotte Wheeler, as well as our facilitated UK wide monthly members meetups create opportunities for discussion and debate. It is these more informal communities of practice that are really making a difference to those who are already on the agroecological journey.
Of course, we now exist in the age of the webinar and podcast – these are making learning and knowledge exchange so much easier to access and more inclusive than we have ever experienced before, with a wealth of excellent resources available to those who have the inclination to go looking for them – and working with the NFFN on a recent Knowledge Transfer project developing farmer films highlighting nature friendly approaches shows how capable we are of doing this, even when we are distributed over hundreds of miles and can’t travel.
The Landworkers’ Alliance, for whom I am now working to develop accredited agroecological training, are committed to creating, delivering and enabling traineeships, mentoring and a farm start network as well as the work I am focused on – an accredited vocational qualification in agroecology. Others are developing this at degree level such as SRUC in Scotland within the department for Integrated Land Management, and Schumacher College, with a number of post graduate options being offered by (amongst others) Harper Adams, RAU, LJMU and Coventry. But agroecology cannot be the preserve and privilege of graduates and those willing to invest further time and money in post graduate study and research. We need to be delivering this new approach, these ideas and building these communities rhizomatically, at every educational level. This means getting this stuff in front of those who may be least interested and pushing them outside their comfort zone to experience learning in a different way, to understand how it feels to be part of an expanding community, who cheer and support you from the sidelines, who challenge robustly but with respect and whose sharing of experience creates and sustains confidence in everyone they encounter.
The bottom line is that we can’t fix this issue seeking and applying the same old prescriptive advice we have before. We have to be prepared to fail, we have to teach ourselves and others what it is to fail, to learn and to try again. We have to develop the growth mindset Carol Dweck has been telling the education sector about for years.
Yes, I have dropped some names and projects in here for you to go away and look at (and I am, of course, always happy to talk more about these in detail) but you know what? It is up to us to find, develop and share the learning we need. Learning that is multifaceted, complex, dependent on relationships and full of opportunities to fail – learning that is reminiscent of and must be embedded within our own ecosystems and ecologies. As a sector we must apply pressure to colleges, universities, awarding bodies and government funding agencies to review existing ag and horticultural education, and I can assure you that those of us in the position to do so, absolutely are knocking on relevant doors and banging this drum. But if everyone engaging in an existing agroecological community of practice or network got just one additional person to engage, think of the impact that could have, the change that could enable.
Our farming principles start with the soil, our approach to culture change has to be from the ground up.
Photo credit: Verdant Homewood
