'Soil in My Blood:' Women Farmers, Transformative Learning, and Regenerative Agriculture.

摘要

Women farmers in the U.S. are more likely than men to adopt more ecologically-based practices on their farms. In order for such practices to increase, it is relevant to understand how these women farmers learn the values and skills that shape their work. However, despite decades of scientific work on agroecosystems, very little research includes the farmer as a part of the system and even less research describes the experiences of women farmers. Successful women farmers have developed and sustained their practices of regenerative agriculture over a decade or more by learning from the land and other farmers in horizontal networks (both formal and informal). Viewed through an ecofeminist lens, the experiences of these farmers can be understood as a process of personal transformation: in intimate relationship with their land, women regenerative farmers are decolonizing themselves and are thus free to transcend the dualism of nature as capital/nature as living being with rights. Understanding the process of their development and their unique contributions to regenerative agriculture is critical to the growth of an agriculture that supports local economies, civic community, and ecological health. This exploratory dissertation research was to identify and collect the stories of experienced women farmers in the Upper Midwest who self-describe as participating in regenerative agriculture. For the purposes of this study, regenerative agriculture is defined as practices that mimic ecological functions, engage civically with the local community, and are economically viable. Each of these dimensions are further defined and given benchmarks through a review of the literature. This conceptualization of regenerative agriculture implies complex interconnectivity between biological and cultural systems. Core research questions are: How do these women sustain themselves and their practice as regenerative farmers? What does this mean for the future of regenerative agriculture? The women in this study created meaning from their work in three areas. Meanings and motivation emerged from how each farmer situated herself in her farm ecology, how she considered her relationship to her communities, and what values inspired her. To understand the patterns emergent in the stories of the women in this study, this research project draws from and builds on the literatures of agroecology, civic agriculture, local economies, the experiences of women farmers, a conceptual understanding of place as it relates to farmer experience and identity, place-based learning, and transformative learning. These literatures are viewed through an ecofeminist lens, and also informed by principles of feminist science. In this dissertation I describe my rationale for an inductive, mixed methods approach. Arts-informed research and semi-structured ethnographic interviews of women farmers was a way to more effectively capture the multidimensional nature of the experiences of the farmers in the study. Outcomes of this research will be valuable to farmers, educators and researchers, and include: increased awareness of stories of successful women farmers; increased understanding of the creativity and attitudes farmers learn in order to persist in farming over a decade or more; increased knowledge of how to manage farms holistically as biocultural systems that include humans as part of the system; and more examples of interdisciplinary research methodology that provide a critical addition to the science of agroecology and the technical development of farming. Over the long term, these outcomes may contribute to the growth of regenerative agriculture.