Systems Thinking in Organic Research: Does it Happen?

Systems thinking has developed in tune with the attempt to define and model complex behaviours in both physical and biological systems. Many tools have been developed that enable complex systems to be described. Such tools have enormous potential for use in understanding organic farming systems, which are complex social-economic-ecological systems. Agricultural research in general, including research on organic farming, has tended to oversimplify complex situations, and thus has generally delivered solutions that are often only partial, or sometimes positively damaging, to the systems into which they have been applied. The aims of the organic agricultural movement would seem to be more sympathetic to the application of an holistic overview of the research and development process, and to developing a ‘systems or systemic approach ’ to problems at several levels of aggregation. However, a more systematic inclusion of systems thinking in current organic research and development programmes will have to be actively encouraged if this potential is to be fully realized