School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences - Theses
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ItemGoverning agriculture for rural community sustainability: a case study in the Australian dairy industry( 2015)This thesis focuses on the concept of industry governance to examine the processes shaping agricultural change in Australia. It aims to identify how agricultural industry governance can better support rural community sustainability, understood as having social, economic, environmental and equity dimensions. I adopt a conceptual framing of industry governance as a process of collective action involving actors and activity in three spheres: place, industry and state. I use actor-network theory (ANT) to trace how industry governance activity arises from associations between human and non-human actors. This theoretical choice seeks to make research a practice that reveals opportunities for things to be different, rather than one that adds weight to existing explanations of why things are as they are. The research design consists of a single case study in the dairy industry in north-east Victoria, Australia. I analyse the organisational arrangements and processes entailed in industry governance, including processes occurring within one local community – the Mitta Valley. I also examine the social and material practices revealed in a regional-scale industry development project – the Alpine Valleys Dairy Pathways (AVDP) project. Data generated include seventy interviews with dairy farmers, other community members and governance actors, three years of participant observations of the AVDP project and content analysis of relevant documents including news media. Cognisant of the opportunities and risks of my close engagement with research participants' reflection and action, I enacted my research practice as systemic inquiry. People in the Mitta Valley see agriculture, and particularly dairy farming, as highly desirable activities that build on the strengths of their place, and that could help their community sustain itself into the future. However, they have doubts about the feasibility and desirability of continuing the existing agricultural development trajectory toward larger, more intensive farms. I found that the dairy industry, through the industry ‘sustainability’ agenda, is engaging with citizens' and customers' demands for improved environmental management and animal welfare. However, industry governance continues to shape change toward larger, more intensive and more highly-capitalised farms. There is a current focus on promoting more diverse farm business models (or organisation forms), potentially involving separation of land ownership, farm business ownership, and farm management responsibility. Industry and government actors are not examining the potential implications of such changes for rural communities. Understanding governance as collective action, using the conceptual tools of ANT, provides insight as to why this is the case. I identify 'industry growth' as a boundary object that is integral to the establishment of collective action, and that enacts a positive and unproblematic relationship between dairy industry development and community benefit. Governing agriculture for community sustainability requires governance actors representing the interests of communities to be included in industry development planning and action, and to be prepared to question the assumed benefits of 'growth', in the light of the range of processes that communities identify as contributing to their sustainability. This change in governing practices could result in changed emphases within industries' practice change interventions, to shape growth in accordance with communities' collective interests.