Response to Vanclayet al.on Farming Styles: Q Methodology for Identifying Styles and its Relevance to Extension

Abstract

AbstractIn 2006 Vanclayet al.provided a critical account of the concept of farming styles and proposed revised concepts that enhance our understanding of styles. Their research experience led them to reconceptualise farming styles by applying them to five levels. They concluded that there was no support for a single set of farming styles, that farming styles are more an intellectual construction than a social construction, and that they were not real. In their revised view of farming styles Vanclayet al.discussed and assessed eight issues about the concept of farming styles. We agree with all but two of these assessments – the claim that there is no method that can uncover styles of farming and the claim that such research is not useful for extension. We show in this article that there is a well‐established method for identifying farming styles and that such research is very useful for extension. In making our case we contribute to a better understanding of farming styles, one that uses a method that rests on what farmers state is their approach to managing a farm rather than on methods that rely on researcher assessments of farming styles.