For a group of weed scientists at the University of Minnesota, creating a widespread system of sustainable agriculture does not mean simply finding the right answers through research and expecting farmers to adopt their suggestions. For them, there is an important social aspect to sustainability as well, one that includes exchanging information, creative innovation, and changing perceptions of farm systems through group learning. These, they say, are all crucial parts of moving toward sustainability. They are trying to redefine the concept of knowledge in their field so that their weed biology material counterpoints direct farmer experience.

In 1998, Nick Jordan, Jeff Gunsolus, Roger Becker, Steve Simmons, and Sue White organized two experimental weed management "learning groups" of 18 members, including farmers, scientists, and extension educators. These groups met regularly for over two years, providing a place for farmers to discuss and share their personal experiences with weed management, relate stories of on-farm experiments, and learn fundamental principles of weed ecology. "We wanted to pay attention to what we're learning, and we wanted to share what we're learning," explains White. "We wanted to take a step back and learn as a group."

In doing so, the group emphasized farmer knowledge more than has typically been done in the past. "Above all, the goal is to try to build a knowledge base for sustainable agriculture based on the understanding that our current way to share knowledge is incomplete," says Jordan. "Sustainable food systems are very localized and suited to local circumstances. If we want localized knowledge to come into play, we need to recognize the forms of knowledge beyond scientific. A more integrated knowledge base for sustainable agriculture will increase innovation across many different professions and disciplines, and spur each of us on to speed up our work."

Their approach is based on the notion that the essence of the search for sustainability is increasing farmers' ability to be inquisitive about their local circumstances. In the current situation of fewer farmers managing larger acreages, says White, so many farmers are used to deferring to people in positions of expertise about farm management that they fail to realize they are experts themselves. "We recognize that farmers know more about their farms than anyone else," says White. They hope that the learning groups, by empowering farmers to recognize and share their knowledge, will provide long-lasting changes to farmers' approach to weed management, and just as importantly, change researchers' approach to their own work as well.

Creating space for collaborative learning

The project began with White directly recruiting participants, searching for a diverse group of farmers in size, scale, and the practices they used - including a mixture of both conventional and organic farmers. A soybean growers group and a vegetable growers group were brought together, each with three research scientists, two extension educators, and thirteen farmers. Jordan emphasizes that in the group setting, finding different people with a variety of viewpoints was essential; and he credits part of the project's overall success to White's recruitment efforts. "She found people interested in facing challenging questions, people who were seriously examining the way they were farming," he explains.

Jordan also feels that placing organic and conventional farmers side-by-side in such direct contact ultimately proved beneficial for everyone involved. "We were able to move away from [feelings of apprehension] to candid discussion of unsolved weed management problems," he says. "We recognized that everybody had relevant knowledge, and that farmers shared problems across philosophies and backgrounds."

Many farmers who were involved in the groups agreed. "We've created an environment where doubts that I can farm without chemicals can surface without judgment from others," said one farmer. "It's a non-threatening environment, so I can say I tried something but it didn't work, and I don't feel dumb for saying it. We are not bad- mouthing each other, but learning from each other."

Another farmer said, "the blend of conventional and non-conventional people serves to push the envelope faster and more efficiently," and yet another added, "we have more in common that we have in differences. We are all struggling to do the same thing for a living in the best way we can."

Meetings, though open-ended, tended to follow a general format. An initial short presentation given by a researcher on a previously agreed-upon topic, such as soil biota, was followed by a discussion adding farmer knowledge and experience to the subject. "Farmers really had a lot to say in the agenda," says White. "Scientists were there to enhance what farmers said they wanted to learn more about." Jordan termed the brief presentations "a lens with which to view the reality of farming" that developed farmers' ability to think about their farm. In one meeting, for example, a presentation on risk management was followed by a discussion between farmers on how they might change their operations.

Both White and Jordan were quite surprised with how well discussions took off. "A sense of trust, that farmers needed something from each other, just blossomed," says Jordan. White adds, "The first few meetings lasted more than the couple of hours we had planned. People didn't want to leave. I was so amazed that they shared so much information with each other."

Many farmers were reserved at first, but those attitudes changed as the meetings went on. "Something I experienced was a building of self-confidence from sharing our successes and failures," explained one participant. Another noted that "farming has such long lead times that it can take years to figure out what's wrong. If I can talk to others and speed up the learning process, that's really valuable." In the summer, the farmers agreed to each do an on-farm project, and to report back to the group about their findings in the fall. Entirely farmer-designed, these ranged from simply monitoring a field for weed development, to actually running various trials on the farm.

"When the groups resumed meeting in the fall and the farmers talked about their summer on-farm projects, our meetings were so energized from the sharing of experiences" recalls White. Many farmers felt that the ability to get actively involved in the group, as opposed to the classroom setting some of them were first expecting, was "one of the real strengths of the group."

The groups continued to meet until late 2000, when the two-year pilot project was completed. The project coordinators hope to see more learning groups in the future. "This is not a totally new concept," says Becker, one of the extension educators involved in the project. "This is really formalizing it and giving people a framework so they can say, yes, I can do this. It's not rocket science. A lot of people can do this."

Transforming knowledge

"We began our work with the idea that… how farmers viewed their farms and weeds were significant to progress toward our shared vision of diversified, farm-specific integrated weed management," the research team wrote in a paper on their work. The major goal was not just to provide a space for dialogue, but also to initiate what they called transformational learning - actually changing the way farmers approached their farm and their practices as a result. The hope was to foster an approach to weed management that considered long-term consequences, integrated the whole farm into understanding weed problems, and was preventive instead of reactive in its approach.

"Most of us, as producers who are attempting to move away from what I call 'chemical dependency', are facing the same basic issues, such as understanding the biology of weeds, understanding the relationships between soils, soil temperature, weather, crop rotations, and how they help or hinder us in our weed management," said one organic soybean grower, highlighting the sorts of questions raised in the group sessions. With these issues in mind, the group leaders worked to emphasize integrated weed management practices that give crops advantages relative to weeds; including practices such as judicious placement of irrigation and fertilizer, using competitive crop varieties, growing crops closer together, and increasing tillage, cover cropping, and cultivation.

Jordan also emphasized taking into account the dynamics of weed emergence. With some species, a weed's emergence date can be determined to within a week each year, and farmers can delay planting until after the weed has emerged, when it can be easily controlled. "The essence is fine tuning of farmer operations," says Jordan. "Just asking yourself, how can I tweak what I'm doing to the disadvantage of the weeds?"

White also wanted to stress the importance of a diversified management system. "We're seeing weeds that weren't problems before become problems," explains White, pointing to waterhemp as an example, which was hardly present as a weed in Minnesota 20 years ago. Weeds are opportunists, she says, and adapt to the continuous use of herbicides. "Farmers have set up environments that the weeds have been selected for," she explains. "We need to understand the risks of a simplified management system. It can't and it won't work for more than a few years."

For example, White finds that many farmers are unused to thinking about the seed bank of the soil, where there are literally millions of weed seeds, some that can survive in the soil for decades. "When farmers start to realize that the next potential problem is already in the soil, they realize that eradication is futile," she says. They can then begin to turn to other, more integrated management practices. "It's kind of an 'aha!' thing," White explains.

It is that "aha!" that the researchers call transformative learning - helping tune farmers in to viewing their whole farm as a system, and helping them realize that they can manage it holistically from that point of view.

Looking for signs of success

Hana Niemi completed her master's thesis on a study of responses that group members had to their two-year involvement in the group. She attended the last two meetings, participated in a group evaluation, and then interviewed each group member indivudually. "Most questions were tailored to whether transformational learning had occurred," Niemi explains. "I was looking for a worldview shift. The hope was that by being in contact with people who saw things very differently, the participants might realize something they had never thought of before."

Niemi focused on studying the positive effects of social learning, which she sees as developing confidence in farmers and empowering them to make decisions on their farms. "As technology increases along with farm size and dependence on inputs, a farmer's capacity and opportunity to 'know their land' is diminished," Niemi explains. "Hand in hand with larger farm acreage and more complex technologies comes managers who are increasingly more reliant on 'experts' to make decisions." This lack of confidence, she says, is the most significant roadblock to a farmer implementing sustainable, holistic farming practices.

One of the farmers Niemi interviewed agreed, saying, "I think that's really what we - as managers, as farmers - have lost, the knowledge that we gain from walking in the fields." Niemi studied her transcribed interviews for signs of empowerment on individual, group, and community levels. On an individual level, she explains, farmers make their own decisions; on the group level, they come together to learn; and on the community level, they go out and share what they've found with others.

Niemi's collection of quotes speaks more than any other source about whether or not farmers were empowered by the groups. "I feel much more confident," one farmer said. "Things keep getting better and better, as far as weed management, and not having to become more dependent on purchased inputs, and becoming more dependent on [my own] management." Another grower, who was initially reserved about whether he would have anything to contribute, later said that "we each have something. It seemed everybody in the group brought something to it."

The discussion groups even altered some farmers' perceptions of themselves. In one interview, a farmer spoke of feeling an "enhanced value" to his own labor, and coming to see himself as a manager whose "labor becomes critical, something valuable." Niemi also reports that many farmers are continuing the practices discovered during the summer field trials. "You would have to have had your eyes closed and your ears plugged to not know more about how to manage and understand weeds," one farmer told Niemi. "I believe I'm making better decisions now."

A long-term impact has clearly been made for the farmers involved, says Niemi. "You don't have a lot of interaction between farmers today," she explains. "A lot of them talked about feeling isolated. Now if they have a question, they can ask someone about it." One farmer, she says, called it a blessing to have an experience where he could participate and interact with other members in a learning environment.

"A considerable amount of empowerment has been created," concludes Jordan, who advised Niemi on her dissertation work. "A number of farmers say they are thinking very differently about farming, having new practices, and new working relationships. Several farmers feel much more comfortable thinking about their farms as a whole. They think about the root causes of their problems, and ask themselves, why are there weeds? How can I restructure my farm as a result?" Creating an atmosphere where these sorts of questions would naturally arise, Jordan explains, is what they had hoped to achieve with their work.

Changing the role of the educator

The reach of the learning groups extends not only to farmers, Jordan and White point out, but to the University faculty as well. For extension educators, learning groups represent a major step away from the traditional field day setting, where educators sometimes lecture to over a hundred farmers. Becker got involved with the weed learning groups because they seemed like a great opportunity to try new educational techniques, and like the farmers involved, he found it to be a beneficial experience.

"It can get frustrating going to field days all summer and county meetings all winter long," says Becker. "You start wondering what the benefit is." Becker also points to the increasing consolidation of the agricultural field, which provides fewer farmers to talk to. He thinks that the increase of commodity crops is forcing specialists to pay more attention to crops than to farmers. "But somebody needs to address these people's concerns about weed control," he says.

Becker says that the learning groups give educators a chance to provide broader knowledge to farmers. "The classic expert problem is spilling buckets of knowledge at people that just doesn't help," he explains. "In the small groups, people learn some underlying principles of weed biology, asking what does this weed do, rather than asking what herbicide do I use to get rid of it."

Farmers seemed to agree. "It wasn't like going to a conference… and getting way too much information in a two day period and then going home and putting your notebook on the shelf and then forgetting it," one farmer said. "It was an ongoing thing, the same kind of thinking coming around at you for two years, with the same people."

Becker was also glad for the opportunity to step out of the expert's shoes and actually interact with group members. "We were trying to get everybody out of the expert model," Becker explained. "It will come out that farmers have some underlying knowledge, they just haven't realized it. We wanted to let common problems and issues co-evolve in the group."

Would he do it again? "It's not the one-tool fix-all, but definitely, there should be more of this going on," Becker says. "We've contacted fewer people, but we've had more of an impact on them. The underlying problem is finding the time to do this. But when all is said and done, it's probably better to work in small groups."

Growing from here

The next step, for the researchers involved in the trial project, is envisioning a network of learning groups across the state. "We're trying to multiply this," says White. She thinks that the trial run indicates the groups have a chance to be very rewarding and successful. There are currently 8-10 groups with about 10 farmers each throughout Minnesota, and Niemi says that there are a handful of spinoff groups from the originals she studied. "Some of those people hopped on board and it just took off," Niemi says. There are also learning groups of educators and scientists, working on getting more confident about leading the learning groups on their own. "We have been part of something very unique here and our challenge is to figure out how to replicate this experience in a thousand different variations around a hundred different topics," one farmer told Niemi.

"Its very clear to me that learning in collaboration was very meaningful and beneficial to everyone that contributed to the groups," Niemi said. "There was no one that hadn't gotten anything out of it." The implication of the groups' success is not just a more effective way to promote holistic farm management, but a change in the very approach to promoting sustainability. As Niemi puts it, "More interaction is crucial if we're going to have more learning in agriculture." And that learning, in the end, is what she hopes will make a difference.

Roger Becker: becke003@umn.edu

Jeff Gunsolus: gunso001@umn.edu

Nicholas Jordan: jorda020@umn.edu

Steve Simmons: ssimmons@umn.edu

Susan White: white009@umn.edu

Hana Niemi: niem0099@umn.edu