Extension
For Heather, extension is about
Working with communities to enable and facilitate change – enabling a change in thinking, understanding and behavior
Grassroots - growers and farmers leading change rather than top-down driven change
Fostering different perspectives, building trust, creating momentum.
Building and utilising social networks: learning by doing, exchanging knowledge, learning from each other.
Including, involving and engaging - collaborative approaches e.g. co-innovation that involves and engages all stakeholders to tackle more complex (‘wicked’) problems and opportunities
“Heather ran a series of farmer workshops for me that I needed to be more than the ‘same old, same old’. I wanted the farmers to learn what they wanted, and I wanted to understand more of their challenges - in their own terms. The results were fantastic and delivered the engagement, insight and just the new approach to ”
CASE STUDY
Starborough Flaxbourne Soil Conservation Project - A sheep & beef farmer-led community initiative to explore sustainable dryland farming systems.
Doing what she loves: Use of facilitation to create space for change: helping a rural community identify issues, opportunities and solutions; helping a rural community look forwards and celebrate their success; connecting individuals and groups; researching changes in farmer and community thinking, understanding and behaviour around dryland sheep & beef farming.
The Starborough Flaxbourne Soil Conservation Group (SFSCG) formed in 2004 to find ways for farmers to affordably and effectively manage drought. The farmers realised their farming future was threatened by soil damage on their north-facing slopes, caused by successive years of drier than average rainfall. Marlborough has always been summer-dry, but the repeated failure of spring and autumn rains forced drastic de-stocking which in turn reduced incomes causing community decline. The three-year project was jointly funded by MPI (Sustainable Farming Fund), the NZ Landcare Trust, Marlborough District Council and Marlborough Research Centre. This extension and education project, and subsequent social research, set the seed for Heather’s PhD research.