Farming as dialogue with the land – Exploring experiences and perspectives of Norwegian, biodynamic farmers

Abstract

Modern agriculture, including many alternative farming movements, tends to hold views that maintain a reductionistic and materialistic understanding of the world. This thesis explores perspectives and experiences in Norwegian, biodynamic farmers that goes beyond these worldviews. Through content analysis of two semi-structured interviews and eight informal conversations with farmers over the summer in 2023, I derived four themes that speak to how these farmers approach their work as a dialogue with the land: 1) Staying open, 2) Respecting and recognising others 3) Choosing alternative values, and 4) Being an interconnected part of the whole. I then used the four quadrants model of integral theory to find supportive and obstructive forces that help and hinder the farmers in approaching their work as a dialogue with the land. All of the farmers expressed views or shared from experiences that suggests a non-materialistic perspective. I argue how our inability to validate and support these alternative perspectives of biodynamic farmers and others might in part be an epistemological question pertaining to our tendency to disregard what does not easily fit inside our language, concepts, and current understanding of the world.