Overview

This thesis links three interconnected stories relevant to humanity‟s future: 1. Exposition of a different form of agriculture; 2. An exploration of the nature of transformational change; and 3. Revelation of a new way of regenerating Mother Earth via the melding of new and old knowledge. A confluence of multiple and interconnected crises now threatens the self-regulating capacity of the planet and thus the future of humanity itself. Food security is one of these crises, placing agriculture front and centre in addressing this challenge. Agriculture is problematic because practices integral to industrial agriculture are known to inhibit the continuing provision of essential ecosystem services (including adequate healthy food and water). This thesis explores both the reasons why traditional agricultural practices fail, and the rise of a change-oriented new-organic agriculture that is taking their place. The study population comprised seventy-nine innovative Australian farmers who have successfully developed ruminant-based, agro-ecological practices that cover broad areas of land. The challenge was to find how and why this group of agriculturalists undertook transformational changes in their practices. Preliminary investigation suggested farmers‟ belief-systems were central to the answer. Multi-method research based on critical, open trans-disciplinary inquiry was used to analyse interviews, documents, and historical material. The study focussed on the interconnection of language and metaphor, the role of discourses, and the power-knowledge nexus in the formation of personal psychological constructs. A study of Western thought since 1500 revealed that an earlier organic view of the cosmos was replaced by science- and technology-based mercantile capitalism which led to an embedding of the mechanical metaphor in Western thinking. This metaphor regards nature as dead and passive, and something to be reconstructed, dominated, and controlled: as opposed to the ancient organic metaphor which saw the cosmos as a living female earth, to be nurtured and sustained.

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