Preferred presentation format: Poster

Affiliation(s): (1) University of Western Sydney
(2) Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania

Title: Mr Luciano Mesiti Position: Lecturer Organisation: University of Western Sydney Hawkesbury Campus Contact email: L.mesiti@uws.edu.au Contact phone: 02 45701730

Keywords: farming, styles, viticulture, extension, diversity, communities

Viticultural extension, and most agricultural extension in Australia, have long followed the traditional adoption/diffusion process. Extension initiatives have concentrated on the technical aspects of farming, without taking into consideration the socio-cultural and socio-economic complexity and diversity of farm management approaches. Traditionally, farming has been mostly perceived as a technical process in which improvements on farm means improving and optimising what exists, for example, plant production and machine technologies. In terms of understanding diversity within agriculture, what more important, however, is viewing farming as a social process with environmental, ecological and political components.

Farming styles is a relevant and comparatively new perspective in extension science. The central concept of the farming styles approach is that in a farming community there is a set of discrete ways of farming, or strategies for the management of farms. The approach provides an understanding and theorization of the diversity that exists in farming communities. An alleged benefit of this approach is the potential ability to target the specific needs of farmers according to the style they embody.

Research has been conducted with grape growers of the Sunraysia region of Victoria and New South Wales to identify farming styles in viticulture and to explore the usefulness and applicability of the approach to viticulture. Several styles of grape growing were identified in the research and they form the basis of an in depth research into the value of classifying farmers to extension science. This poster presents a broad overview of the research and what this means to extension.

Key learning points:

• Farming as a social process
• Farming Styles as a means to understand diversity in farming communities
• The styles of farming of grape growers