No‐tillage farming: co‐creation of innovation through network building

This paper studied the development of no‐tillage by combining concepts of co‐creation of knowledge and actor‐network theory. Reconstructing the process of no‐tillage development in Switzerland has made it possible to show that no‐tillage development may be regarded as a dynamic process of co‐creation of innovation, where human and non‐human actors are building networks by reciprocally transforming and translating each other and the relations between them. This conceptualisation reveals that spread of no‐tillage requires fundamental transformations within the network of conventional plough‐tillage agriculture, including institutional arrangements, farm equipment, work organisation, concepts of agriculture and personal and professional identities. Against this background, the limited spread of no‐tillage—despite its economic and ecological advantages—can be explained by the fact that the required transformations are too radical for many agricultural actors. This conceptualisation also implies that policy interventions are not understood as top down measures that intend to induce one‐to‐one direct causal chains between knowledge and action of farmers, but as mediators in a complex process of reciprocal translations between farmers, experts and scientists, as well as many non‐human actors. We conclude that investigating processes of co‐creation of knowledge from the perspective of actor‐network theory is a promising complement to hermeneutic approaches to co‐creation of knowledge such as social learning. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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