How Farmers Learn About Environmental Issues: Reflections on a Sociobiographical Approach

At the time of this research, protests of farmers against new environmental policy measures received much media attention. News reports suggested that farmers’ organizations rejected the idea that modern farming techniques cause damage to the environment and even tried to undermine attempts to reconcile the goals of modern agriculture with environmental objectives. In this article, the authors focus on how farmers learn to connect to various narratives about the issues at stake and on how these narratives are constructed through everyday encounters within the diverse networks to which farmers belong. As this article demonstrates, of particular interest for researchers is the kind of learning that occurs in response to differences in opinion. Accordingly, the authors introduce a new metaphor, called “learning as response, ” which helps understand how farmers may learn, again and again, to respond “as singular beings ” to the ambiguities and differences they encounter in their everyday professional life. Keywords metaphors of learning, environmental adult education, sociobiographical research The prominent role assigned to environmental learning within contemporary interna-tional policies such as Agenda 21 and initiatives such as the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development offers a unique opportunity for teaching, researching