Abstract
Fresh water and arable land are essential for agricultural production and food processing. However, managing conflicting demands over water and land can be challenging for business leaders, environmentalists and other stakeholders. This paper characterizes these challenges as wicked problems. Wicked problems are ill-formed, fuzzy, and messy, because they involve many clients and decisions makers with conflicting values. They are also not solvable, but rather must be managed. How can agribusiness leaders effectively manage wicked problems, especially if they have little practice in doing so? This paper argues that a Community of Practice (CoP) and its tripartite elements of domain, community and practice can be effective in helping businesses manage wicked problems by focusing on the positive links between environmental stewardship and economic performance. Empirically, the paper examines three agribusinesses to assess the extent in which CoP is used as a strategy for sustainable water management.
Highlights
The human need for food requires fresh water and arable land for agricultural production and food processing
We argue that working in a participatory way for agribusiness and environmental organizations, such as community of practice, can capitalize on the local knowledge that exists between different organizations and stakeholders and facilitate the formation of improved management to solutions to wicked problems
The National Institute of Food and Agricultural (NIFA) of the U.S Department of Agriculture requests specific proposals directed at societal goals, such as rural agribusiness development and small farm prosperity, which face megatrends, such as, diverting farmland historically used for crops to biofuel production, changing income and diets, climate change, increasing urbanization, food versus food and minimal ecological footprints, that are incapable of a technical solution
Summary
The human need for food requires fresh water and arable land for agricultural production and food processing. Many aspects of the inextricable link of land and water to the production of food and fiber creates problems that agribusinesses may need to bring to the decision table. These problems often have something to do with the lack of congruence among environmental, social, and economic values, institutions, and practices that explain the irreversible processes of environmental degradation and our irreducible need of water. Water and land used to produce food and fiber are increasingly linked to making trade-offs among people, profit and planet These problems are wicked because the definition of the issue is unclear and the solution to it is unclear [1]
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