IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v28y2011i1p55-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can farmers map their farm system? Causal mapping and the sustainability of sheep/beef farms in New Zealand

Author

Listed:
  • John Fairweather
  • Lesley Hunt

Abstract

It is generally accepted that farmers manage a complex farm system. In this article we seek answers to the following questions. How do farmers perceive and understand their farm system? Are they sufficiently aware of their farm system that they are able to represent it in the form of a map? The research reported describes how causal mapping was applied to sheep/beef farmers in New Zealand and shows that farmers can create maps of their farm systems in ways that allow expression of both individual maps and the formation of group maps which represent the general character of farm systems. A group map was made for all the farmers studied and for subgroups using conventional, integrated, and organic management systems. The results are discussed in terms of the depth of meaning associated with individual elements of the map, map complexity and the limitations of causal mapping. Causal mapping has the potential to contribute to our knowledge of how farmers see their farm systems, and this can benefit farmers and other stakeholders concerned with the management of farms and their economic and environmental performance. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Suggested Citation

  • John Fairweather & Lesley Hunt, 2011. "Can farmers map their farm system? Causal mapping and the sustainability of sheep/beef farms in New Zealand," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(1), pages 55-66, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:28:y:2011:i:1:p:55-66
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-009-9252-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-009-9252-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-009-9252-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eden, Colin & Ackermann, Fran, 2004. "Cognitive mapping expert views for policy analysis in the public sector," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(3), pages 615-630, February.
    2. Carsten Hjortsø & Stig Christensen & Peter Tarp, 2005. "Rapid stakeholder and conflict assessment for natural resource management using cognitive mapping: The case of Damdoi Forest Enterprise, Vietnam," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 22(2), pages 149-167, June.
    3. Tikkanen, Jukka & Isokaanta, Tarja & Pykalainen, Jouni & Leskinen, Pekka, 2006. "Applying cognitive mapping approach to explore the objective-structure of forest owners in a Northern Finnish case area," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 139-152, November.
    4. John Fairweather & Hugh Campbell, 2003. "Environmental beliefs and farm practices of New Zealand farmers Contrasting pathways to sustainability," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 20(3), pages 287-300, September.
    5. Carol Pierce Colfer & Barbara Newton, Herman, 1989. "Ethnicity: An important consideration in Indonesian agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 6(3), pages 52-67, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Garini, C.S. & Vanwindekens, F. & Scholberg, J.M.S. & Wezel, A. & Groot, J.C.J., 2017. "Drivers of adoption of agroecological practices for winegrowers and influence from policies in the province of Trento, Italy," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 200-211.
    2. Bonnie Averbuch & Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe & Chris Kjeldsen, 2022. "Using fuzzy cognitive mapping and social capital to explain differences in sustainability perceptions between farmers in the northeast US and Denmark," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(1), pages 435-453, March.
    3. Evgenia Micha & Owen Fenton & Karen Daly & Gabriella Kakonyi & Golnaz Ezzati & Thomas Moloney & Steven Thornton, 2020. "The Complex Pathway towards Farm-Level Sustainable Intensification: An Exploratory Network Analysis of Stakeholders’ Knowledge and Perception," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-20, March.
    4. Victoria Alomia‐Hinojosa & Jeroen C. J. Groot & Jens A. Andersson & Erika N. Speelman & Andrew J. McDonald & Pablo Tittonell, 2023. "Assessing farmer perceptions on livestock intensification and associated trade‐offs using fuzzy cognitive maps; a study in mixed farming systems in the mid‐hills of Nepal," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 146-158, January.
    5. Mariem Baccar & Ahmed Bouaziz & Patrick Dugué & Mohamed Gafsi & Pierre-Yves Le Gal, 2020. "Sustainability Viewed from Farmers’ Perspectives in a Resource-Constrained Environment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-15, October.
    6. Zagata, Lukas & Uhnak, Tomas & Hrabák, Jiří, 2021. "Moderately radical? Stakeholders' perspectives on societal roles and transformative potential of organic agriculture," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    7. Vanwindekens, Frédéric M. & Stilmant, Didier & Baret, Philippe V., 2013. "Development of a broadened cognitive mapping approach for analysing systems of practices in social–ecological systems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 250(C), pages 352-362.
    8. Louis Tessier & Jo Bijttebier & Fleur Marchand & Philippe V. Baret, 2021. "Cognitive mapping, flemish beef farmers’ perspectives and farm functioning: a critical methodological reflection," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(4), pages 1003-1019, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fairweather, John, 2010. "Farmer models of socio-ecologic systems: Application of causal mapping across multiple locations," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(3), pages 555-562.
    2. Sébastien Damart, 2010. "A Cognitive Mapping Approach to Organizing the Participation of Multiple Actors in a Problem Structuring Process," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 505-526, September.
    3. Gomes, Luís S. & Santos, Sérgio P. & Coelho, Luís Serra & Rebelo, Efigénio L., 2023. "Using MCDA to assist an Intermunicipal community develop a resilience strategy in face of the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PB).
    4. Joseph Kim‐Keung Ho, 2015. "An Exploration of the Problem of Plagiarism with the Cognitive Mapping Technique," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(6), pages 735-742, November.
    5. E. Penot & F. Ruf, 2001. "Rubber smallholders' flexibility No windfall, no crisis," Post-Print hal-00172487, HAL.
    6. Bruno M. B. Pinto & Fernando A. F. Ferreira & Ronald W. Spahr & Mark A. Sunderman & Leandro F. Pereira, 2023. "Analyzing causes of urban blight using cognitive mapping and DEMATEL," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(2), pages 1083-1110, June.
    7. David C. Lane, 2010. "OR FORUM---High Leverage Interventions: Three Cases of Defensive Action and Their Lessons for OR/MS Today," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1535-1547, December.
    8. Damart, Sébastien & Roy, Bernard, 2009. "The uses of cost-benefit analysis in public transportation decision-making in France," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 200-212, August.
    9. Fabio Blanco-Mesa & Anna M. Gil-Lafuente & José M. Merigó, 2018. "Subjective stakeholder dynamics relationships treatment: a methodological approach using fuzzy decision-making," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 441-472, December.
    10. G A Hindle & L A Franco, 2009. "Combining problem structuring methods to conduct applied research: a mixed methods approach to studying fitness-to-drive in the UK," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(12), pages 1637-1648, December.
    11. Vieira, Fabiana C. & Ferreira, Fernando A.F. & Govindan, Kannan & Ferreira, Neuza C.M.Q.F. & Banaitis, Audrius, 2022. "Measuring urban digitalization using cognitive mapping and the best worst method (BWM)," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    12. Vanwindekens, Frédéric M. & Stilmant, Didier & Baret, Philippe V., 2013. "Development of a broadened cognitive mapping approach for analysing systems of practices in social–ecological systems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 250(C), pages 352-362.
    13. Amidou Kpoumié & Sébastien Damart & Alexis Tsoukiàs, 2012. "Integrating Cognitive Mapping Analysis into Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding," Working Papers hal-00875480, HAL.
    14. Min, Shi & Bai, Junfei & Wang, Xiaobing & Waibel, Hermann, 2024. "Does an inconsistent land tenure certificate affect technical efficiency of smallholder rubber farming: Evidence from a panel data in Southwest China," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    15. Sacha Amaruzaman & Douglas K. Bardsley & Randy Stringer, 2022. "Reflexive policies and the complex socio-ecological systems of the upland landscapes in Indonesia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 683-700, June.
    16. Giovanni Ávila-Flores & Judith Juárez-Mancilla & Gustavo Hinojosa-Arango & Plácido Cruz-Chávez & Juan Manuel López-Vivas & Oscar Arizpe-Covarrubias, 2020. "A Practical Index to Estimate Mangrove Conservation Status: The Forests from La Paz Bay, Mexico as a Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-17, January.
    17. White, Leroy, 2018. "A Cook's tour: Towards a framework for measuring the social impact of social purpose organisations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 268(3), pages 784-797.
    18. Marike Isaak & Wolfgang Lentz, 2020. "Consumer Preferences for Sustainability in Food and Non-Food Horticulture Production," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-16, August.
    19. Igor Pyrko & Colin Eden & Susan Howick, 2019. "Knowledge Acquisition Using Group Support Systems," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 233-253, April.
    20. Sébastien Damart & Bernard Roy, 2006. "Limitations of Cost Benefit Analysis to support public debate: the case of public Transportation Decision-making in France," Working Papers hal-00948675, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:28:y:2011:i:1:p:55-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.