| To understand multiple dimensions and connections in today’s complex farming systems, it is essential to move beyond the narrow disciplinary focus found in most university agriculture courses and learn from farmers who are intimately integrated with farm decisions. In many ways, the classical agriculture department is a human construct developed for our convenience, and as such it scarcely represents an ecological structure operating on farms. To adequately delve into the mechanisms of crop/weed, crop/animal, product/market, and myriad other interactions involved in agriculture, it is essential that we draw on methods from the biophysical and social sciences to help us understand the human activity system that is farming. For more than a decade, we have... |
