Farmer Engagement with Regenerative Agriculture in New England: Understanding Barriers and Facilitators to Improve Services and Outreach

(1) I engage with three main methods including: (1) in-depth loosely structured interviews, (2) follow-up farm site visit observations and observation at sustainable agricultural events, and (3) web and media content analysis. I will recruit participants through contacting New England extension agencies and sustainable farming organizations, recruitment at events, visiting farms in person, and through participant referral (“snowball sampling”) (Berg and Lune 2017). Participants who engage in any form of sustainable agriculture will be sought out in the beginning of the study. After interviews are underway, I will then further sample by purposefully seeking out farmers that can represent a variability in demographics and RA practices.

a) In-depth loosely structured interviews: I will perform 50 in-depth virtual interviews with farmers who identify themselves as applying an approach to agriculture that aligns with the general practices and goals associated with regenerative agriculture as outlined in other sections of this proposal. Interviews will be 90-120 minutes in length to allow for a deeper understanding of farmer perspectives and experiences than is possible with survey instruments (Prokopy 2011). In order to encourage farmers to take an active role in shaping interviews around topics most important to them, I will conduct the interviews with loosely structured “topic guides” (Ritchie et al. 2013) made up of broad prompts and follow-up probes (Jiménez and Orozco 2021). This intentionally loosely structured design is also more likely to capture the topics most important to the farming community than would survey research instruments or heavily structured qualitative approaches (Prokopy 2011). Interviews  will begin by asking farmers to give an overview of their farm and their role at the farm. I will subsequently probe respondents to discuss their experiences with implementing RA outcome goals and practices (as previously defined). I will only purposefully mention RA near the end of the interview if the term had not yet surfaced to ensure interview  engagement with farmer perspectives on the RA movement specifically. 

b) Follow-up farm site visits: I include follow-up farm site visits for about half the interviewees in order to collect a “thick description” (Levitt et al. 2018; Tracy 2010) of the farm landscape and interactions among farmers, employees, customers, and more-than-human organisms on the farm. These site visits will also continue to highlight farmer voices as they explain the current happenings on their farm and how they make meaning from them (Magnusson 2015).

c) Website and media content analysis: I will perform content analyses of websites and media produced by prominent organizations in the wider RA community in the Northeast in order to examine if prominent themes among farmer participants are also present in the wider NE sustainable farming population. This data will be gathered from public sources, or if needed, requested to draw upon with written consent. These data are largely supplementary to interview data and farm visit observation data.

d) Ethnographic observation at events with the wider RA community: During the study period, I will seek to attend a selection of relevant conferences, events, and/or workshops that will provide me with further context surrounding the experiences of farmers in New England. Observation will include the taking of field notes and writing of post-observation memos. I will acquire consent to observe at events and will largely draw on the data as supplementary to my analysis of individual interviews and farm visits.

(2) To achieve Objective 2, I apply a variety of methods and strategies to ensure the validity and trustworthiness (rigor) of this project across data collection, analysis, and reporting/publishing. I apply multiple types of methods, known as “data triangulation,” in order to verify data collected in one method with the insights drawn from data collected by the remaining methods (Roulston 2010). Interviews for example, provide largely farmer perspectives for analysis, whereas observation at farm visits will allow me to observe the physical environment and relations on the farm directly. Observation and content analyses drawn from websites and events will allow me to compare my participants' responses with the wider community. Further, I will use audio recordings whenever possible to allow for detailed later analysis. Finally, I will also engage in writing short research memos following each interview and ethnographic observation during data collection. Writing memos at this point in the project provides another representation of the data that can also be drawn upon layer for analysis.

To ensure rigor during analysis, I will use verbatim transcripts whenever possible to allow for a full depiction of the data. I will include follow-up calls with a subset of participants during data collection and analysis in order to confirm my understandings and interpretations of the data—known as “respondent validation” (Roulston 2010) or “member checks” (Levitt et al. 2018) (also known as a form of “methodological triangulation” (Roulston 2010). I will also ensure the validity of my analysis through weekly check-ins with my advisor and semi-monthly “peer debriefing” sessions with Dr. Pisani-Gareau, an expert in agroecology, throughout the interpretation and analysis process. Finally, to ensure reliability of data analysis, I will also engage in writing “analytic memos” (Roulston 2010) at least once every two weeks during data analysis to ensure. 

During the publication and presentation phase, I will ensure transparency by presenting findings in farmers’ own words as much as possible within confidentiality requirements.